Sahra Wagenknecht

Fewer and fewer letter-boxes, longer and longer roads to the next branch office and ever longer queues – these problems arise already now as a result of the privatisation of the postal service almost everywhere. Now the company has announced that it wants to get rid of even the last 750 branch offices owned by the company until 2011. Then it might finally be over with territorial coverage. This in spite of the fact that the acceptance of packages or the sale of stamps are basic services of general interest that need to be at everybody's disposal.

Of course, the German Post Service is obliged by law to keep up at least 12000 branches in Germany. Yet, what kind of branches these are doesn't matter. In the future, postal services might only be offered in a “lean“ form in private “partner agencies“ or so-called “post ponts“. If you believe what the association of postal agency entrepreneurs says, each transformation of a branch into a private agency “saves“ 60 percent of the costs. What kind of result such a savings policy will have, should be clear. Next to the limitation of the service offerings, there is likely to result a drastic reduction of personnel, which might make the queues before the counters even longer. Added to that is the fact that the employees in the “partner branches“ in contrast to the regular postal employees are cheated with part-time jobs and dumping wages.

You needn't be surprised about the quick growth of the low-wage sector in Germany. It is now already larger than in almost all other industrial countries: About every fourth employee needs to make do with an annual wage of 15000 Euros or less. It is thus high time to oppose this privatisation frenzy that serves exclusively the stockholders, while consumers and employed once more are on the losing side. Just like the railroads whose partial privatisation was recently decided by the Federal Parliament, the post as well belongs into public authority, because it offers important services from which no one may be excluded.

Yet, the signs continue to point towards sell-out: already months ago, you could read in the financial press that the German Postal Agency looks for a fusion partner for the Post Bank. If there really were such a megafusion in the German banking system, thousands of jobs would be in danger – not to mention the long-term consequences that such a concentration processes would have for the consumers. Even more important is what you don't even get to read in the press: Thus by way of the German Post Address ltd., the maybe largest and up-to-date data bank in the meantime has also been partially privatised: Half of it now belongs to the powerful Bertelsmann company.