The total liberalization of the sector took place on 1er January 2011: to date, few consequences have been felt. Does this mean that the European opening of postal services has had no impact on the French post office? ? Or, on the contrary, that most of the transformations had already been initiated or even ratified before this fateful date ?
The embodiment of social bonds and the last bastion of public service for some, a public limited company already committed to privatization for others, La Poste gives rise to debates, questions, even fears about its future. A laboratory for developments in public services, La Poste constitutes a hybrid legal form between public and private which is seeing the influence of the State gradually disappear.
Structural adaptations have been necessary for several years: to cope with the transformation of the mail activity, to the competition which is already strong in the parcel activity, to adjust the network of post offices to the places of life of the population and to offer an offer in line with the financial services needs of the French. These developments involved the transformation of the Post Office into a public company in 1er January 1991, the subsidiarization and creation of the postal bank at 1er January 2006 and recently (on 1er March 2010) the transformation of the La Poste group into a limited company 100% owned by public capital.
The process of empowering the former administration has begun, but it remains to be seen how far it will go. One of the future challenges of European postal liberalization will undoubtedly be, if we look at the trajectories followed by its European counterparts (see the essay by Dieter Plehwe), that of the opening of capital to private capital. This idea had been strongly contested and had even given rise to an original initiative: the citizens’ vote organized on October 3, 2009 which took the form of a consultation of the French at the call of 80 unions, political parties and associations to demand the implementation of a constitutional referendum.
The resistance that supported this social movement was as much focused on maintaining the social benefits of the Post Office as on the defense of staff. A cross-referenced and comparative look at all European posts highlights the different levels of liberalization of postal services in Europe. European postal services have not all reached the same stage of development and yet the European liberalization of postal services has accelerated their insertion into a competitive market, which has often involved total or partial privatization projects. Thanks to a socio-historical look, a precise sequence of stages can be observed for all European posts. Even if these five stages are not carried out at the same time depending on the country, European postal services are marked by:
1. First of all, the observation of the insufficiency of the public statutes which have historically been assigned to them.
2. This insufficiency has generally led to a dissociation of mail and financial activities within postal services (through a subsidiarization of financial services).
3. In countries carrying out their own banking activity, subsidiary financial services took the form of postal banks and sought to acquire the status of full-fledged credit institution (the latter was obtained in 1995 for Germany, only in 2006 for France). In countries that have chosen an outsourced banking activity, partnerships have already been set up with other private banks (Sweden with the bank PKGreat Britain via a concession until 2013 with Bank of Ireland) or other European postal banks (Italy and Spain thus offer financial products from the German Postal Bank).
4. European directives have at the same time made it necessary to redefine postal missions. Postal directive 97/67/THIS of the European Parliament and Council defines the characteristics of the universal postal service guaranteed by all Member States.
Community directive 97/67/THIS of 1997 was amended in 2002 by another directive 2002/39/THIS which establishes the framework for universal service, by gradually restricting the postal monopoly. The latter first concerned shipments of less than 350g (1997), then those of less than 100g (2002) and finally those of less than 50g (from 1er January 2006). In 2008, Directive 2008/6/THIS sets the date of the total opening of the mail market (end of the monopoly on mail weighing less than 50g) on 1er January 2011.
European deregulation has thus gradually reduced the monopolies of the French Post Office. The imperatives of European construction have led to a disengagement of the State. European Posts adopted private limited company statutes for the most part between 1980 and 1995. France therefore appears to be a follower compared to its European counterparts. This is demonstrated by the statutory transformations of the French post office, which each time becomes more independent from its state supervision and only became a limited company in 2010.
5. The last step consists of noting the joint developments in the status and postal personnel. It does not have the same social consequences depending on the country. Indeed, in countries like Denmark or the Netherlands, where the status of civil servant is hardly different from that of an employee in the private sector, the transposition of management techniques from private companies is less painful and difficult than in countries like France where the defense of the protected status of civil servant is legitimate.
The file on the post office will allow us to question again the total liberalization of the sector. Four texts will, in addition to this introduction, multiply the perspectives (by the levels of analysis and the national contexts studied) around the postal question.
The French Post Office finds itself caught in an evolving contradiction, in which changes in the expectations and representations of its agents and users/customers force it to periodically redefine its missions. The Post Office is a particular institution because it is dual: it appears both as a commercial service and as a social institution. At the microsociological level, Yasmine Siblot’s analysis based on ethnographic observations is symptomatic of the institutional rhetoric developed by the postal organization to obtain a change in its status and continue the liberalization process initiated for a long time. La Poste highlights its social missions and justifies both that its presence in the territory and the social cohesion it ensures requires the parallel implementation of more commercial, more profitable services.
This sharing is less recent than it seems and creates difficulties for agents caught in the tension, even opposition, between these two roles advocated by La Poste. In an essay published in 2008 on the meso-sociological context of the future privatization of the French Post Office, Nadège Vezinat showed that this reform ratifies the coexistence of market and public service logics, and that the tensions linked to this coexistence of Conflicting demands are largely passed on to the group’s employees. Its investigation into financial advisors studies the concrete methods of resolving these tensions which affect both employees and users.
Finally, a macro-sociological look at other European posts such as the British post (Odile Join-Lambert) or the German, French, Dutch and British posts (Dieter Plehwe) reveals in the first case, the description of a increasing circumvention of collective negotiation methods by public employers, and in the other, questions the articulation of logics (contradictory or complementary ?) which prevailed for these European positions.
Odile Join-Lambert traces the history of professional relations and the political place through the agreements which concern the evolution of this institution undermined by its competitors (TNT notably which is already present in England). His study allows us to understand the question of privatization from the point of view of employees who wonder about the precariousness of their jobs. From a “ tradition of decentralized collective bargaining » to the threat of dismissal if concessions are not obtained, the Royal Mail reforms reflect a more general evolution of professional relations within the British public services and are reflected in an increase in social conflicts. With the total opening to competition, the British example suggests that the private sector will seek to increase its place in the postal services market. To respond to this threat, the intention of David Cameron’s government is to privatize the British post office, Royal Mail, except for the subsidiary which manages the post office network.
In a broader perspective, Dieter Plehwe highlights the trajectories of the Dutch and German posts on the one hand and the French and British on the other, showing that the postal services took different paths. The postal strategies of these countries thus meet several criteria: the national context, the positioning of the country in relation to a monopoly activity, its capacity to redefine the missions of its postal services, the size of the country, the balance of power between actors from the market and public actors etc.
Depending on whether European liberalization is conceived as an evolution which requires support or as a constraint, or even an attack on the missions carried out until then under monopoly, the stages identified at the beginning of this introductory text may follow one another more or less quickly. Postal trajectories then take shape around the posts “ avant-garde » (of which Germany and the Netherlands are part) and followers who, like France, have only recently created their postal bank or transformed into a limited company. It remains to be seen at the end of the day what strategy will make it possible to stay among the competitors and who will emerge victorious from this total liberalization, so feared for certain positions and so much hoped for by others.
– The Post Office between public service and market, by Nadège Vezinat.
– The British post office in turmoil, by Odile Join-Lambert.
– A universal post: the moment of truth, by Dieter Plehwe.
– Counters for the suburbs ?, by Yasmine Siblot.