The Financial Times’ account of the “twilight” of the
physical letter frames the decline of letter mail as both a technological
inevitability and a managerial problem to be solved by “efficiency” measures,
price rises, and market-style restructuring. From a socialist perspective,
however, the crisis is not a neutral consequence of digitisation: it is the
political outcome of decades of capitalist restructuring that subordinated a
public service to the demands of private profit and the interests of the
financial oligarchy.
The postal crisis is rooted in the 1970s turn away from
public provision and the conversion of national post services into self-funding,
marketised bodies. In the US, this was formalised in 1971 and has since been
used to impose a profit logic on the USPS. The result is not a natural
“decline” but a targeted programme of austerity, precarious staffing and asset
stripping that converts a lifeline public service into an exploitable logistics
node for private capital.
What the FT calls “adaptation” is, in practice, the
Amazonification of postal labour: intensified workloads, expanded part-time and
on-call rosters, surveillance technologies, and the reorientation of operations
to low-margin parcel volumes while letter delivery is downgraded or reduced.
Across countries, the same pattern repeats: Royal Mail’s conversion under
private owners, Canada Post’s shift to weekend parcel models, Australia Post’s
“alternative” delivery schemes. These are not isolated managerial mistakes but
an international offensive against the working class and public services.
Denmark’s decision to end regular mail delivery is not an
isolated administrative rearrangement or a neutral response to
“digitalisation.” It is the latest episode in a coordinated, international
offensive to subordinate public services to the logic of profit, reduce labour
costs and concentrate logistics in the hands of private and financial
interests. Across Britain, Canada, the United States, Germany, and elsewhere,
the same dynamic is playing out: universal services are downgraded, workloads
are intensified, and precarious and low-paid labour is expanded to maximise
returns for investors.
The collapse of everyday letter delivery in Britain is not
an accident of logistics or “market forces.” It is the result of a political
decision driven by private capital, the regulator and a union apparatus that
has surrendered workers’ interests to corporate management. The Communication
Workers Union (CWU) has been an active participant in the processes that have
enabled the downgrading and dismantling of the Universal Service Obligation
(USO), not its defender. The CWU too often acts as a manager's partner,
negotiating frameworks that legitimise restructuring rather than mobilising
workers to defend public services. The CWU’s role in the Royal Mail sell‑off
shows how this bureaucracy neutralises resistance and imposes pro‑employer
“solutions”
The time is not for moralising nostalgia, but for
struggle to orient our response. The decline of first‑class mail volumes since
2007 has been used politically as evidence that “there is no money” for
universal service. But billions are mobilised for war and corporate bailouts
while postal budgets are hollowed out. The crisis exposes a class choice: fund
universal public services and decent wages, or funnel social wealth into
military spending and private return on capital.
For postal workers, the implications are immediate and
stark. Management and pro‑company union bureaucracies are implementing cuts
that threaten pensions, jobs and safety. The CWU’s Framework Agreement in
Britain and the CUPW deals in Canada show how union leaderships can act as
junior partners in restructuring, demobilising members and legitimising
attacks. Rank‑and‑file resistance is therefore not optional; it is the only
path to defend wages, safety and a universal public service. The rank-and-file
committees forming in the US, UK, Canada, and elsewhere show workers reclaiming
control on the shop floor.
The twilight of the physical letter is not an inevitability
to be mourned in isolation. It is a political question—who controls the communication
infrastructure, who gets paid, and whose needs are prioritised: the working
class or the billionaire owners. The answer lies in workers’ independent
organisation, international solidarity, and a struggle to put public services
under democratic, worker‑led control.
Denmark’s ending of mail delivery is a warning: without organised,
independent worker resistance and international solidarity, universal services
can be dismantled everywhere. The response must be rank‑and‑file organisation,
coordinated international action and a political fight for worker control of
public services and for socialism.
[1]
The twilight of the physical letter-End of deliveries by Denmark’s mail service
bodes ill for the epistolary form-www.ft.com/content/fecad9e1-5b32-420c-83ef-1c261241b352?syn-25a6b1a6=1
