Postal workers seek 'organised' competition

Ahead of the Knesset Economics Committee meeting on the privatization of the Postal Authority today, the academic workers union has asked Communication Minister Reuven Rivlin to ensure the authority is opened to competition in an “organized and responsible” fashion.

Moshe Zimmerman, a union member, said that if competition is introduced all at once, the Postal Authority could collapse.

“The Postal Authority has been managed according to what I would call semi-business or public-business norms, and must now orient itself to the norms of the private market; this is what we want,” Zimmerman said.

Also, the union says it wants to ensure that competition is transparent and fair.

A consortium of private postal distributors is already competing with the authority in lucrative areas such as Tel Aviv, undercutting prices of the government-owned system, which is mandated to provide universal service.

The consortium bases its right to operate on a 1978 letter from the Communications Ministry, which Zimmerman says is absurd. “In 1978, they didn’t even know how to spell competition in Israel,” he said.

Not only that, but the consortium is delivering mail weighing less than half a kilogram, an area in which the Postal Authority has been declared a monopoly, said Zimmerman.

“We want Rivlin to organize the market,” Zimmerman said. “We want it to be clear on what basis we are competing, what kinds of post we are talking about, and how competition will be expanded.”

The union said, however, that it supports opening the market to competition, and that the general workers union also understands that privatization is on its way.