Public will lose most: Outsourcing of Consignia's fleet

Public will lose most. STAR COMMENT
From MORNING STAR, September 4th, 2001

GERRY Smith, the managing director of Consignia’s services group, forecast
yesterday that flogging off the 40,000 Royal Mail and Parcelforce vehicles
would bring “significant cost savings and efficiencies.” But those benefits will not be for Post Office staff or the vast bulk of its
customers. The beneficiaries will be the powerful minority of Consignia’s big-business
customers and its top management who will be transformed into fat cats by the
privatisation of this public service. Contracting out delivery services threatens the jobs, wages and conditions of
postal staff. It is part of the process of reducing a justifiably renowned public
corporation, with a uniform rate of charging for deliveries to any part of
Britain, to yet another private monopoly with a licence to milk the people in
the interests of a cosy group of profiteers. And this process is taking place with the full collaboration of the Blair
government. Not only did Consignia finger Postal Minister Douglas Alexander as being “in
constant dialogue” with the company over the sell-off but the government also
appointed privatisation fanatic Graham Corbett as post regulator. Mr Corbett boasted in Brussels earlier this year that this country was
“significantly ahead of the game” in opening up its postal services to private
competition. In fact, there is no real competition, since no profit-obsessed privateer could
afford the investment necessary to mirror Royal Mail and Parcelforce
structures. What the privateers plan to do is to cherrypick cushy contracts, based on urban
areas and business centres, and leave rural and other less profitable
deliveries to the public carrier. In attacking the sell-off plan the Communication Workers Union is certainly
defending its members’ concerns, but it is also standing up for the public who
will be the main losers in the long run.
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SECTION: LeaderMORNING STAR, 04th September 2001