Posted on 10/27/2021 by PCF
In 3 years, in France, a third of the offices with counters have been closed (from 8,414 to 5,300).
And the worst is in front of us: the new strategic plan plans to close half of them by 2025.
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Everyone is concerned. Small towns like Mancieulles (1,880 inhabitants, Meurthe-et-Moselle) which are struggling to save their only office, or medium-sized towns like Rezé (40,000 inhabitants, Loire-Atlantique) where the main offices are threatened with closure which would lead to the saturation of others.
This is also true for large cities. In Paris (38 offices closed in 5 years), the announcement of the closure in the 20th district of the Belgrand office aroused an outcry from residents (1,000 petitioners in one week), elected officials (on the initiative of elected PCF, 3 wishes in the 20th district and one at the Parisian level voted unanimously) and from the trade unions. A rally took place in the presence of Fabien Roussel this Thursday, October 21 and a citizen collective will be launched on October 27 at the initiative of the PCF, the CGT, SUD PTT and the Convergence services publics. The 20th has 8 full-service offices for 200,000 inhabitants. Closing one is like eliminating the Ulis or Biarritz offices!
In Val-de-Marne, 15 municipalities have experienced at least one office closure since 2017 and four offices are today threatened: Ivry-sur-Seine Plateau, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés La Pie, Villejuif Léo Lagrange and Vincennes Jarry. Regular mobilizations have taken place since September. They are amplifying and extending to the shortage of staff and the reduction in the hours of 50 offices out of the 80 in the department.
The workforce is shrinking even faster: from 2004 to 2020 La Poste cut 55,100 jobs, even though it was the first beneficiary of the CICE. Now only four out of ten retirements are replaced.
However, the Post still delivers 7.4 billion letters and 2.4 billion parcels. It’s not nothing. This justifies a quality public postal service. In addition, La Poste will make more than one billion profits in 2021 and will collect 500 million each year in addition to the State.
Why this austerity cure against the public service then?
On the one hand, the universal public service established by the Maastricht Treaty. Unlike the public service, it is limited to a few obligations (letter of less than 20 grams, 90% of the population within 5 km and less than 20 minutes by car from a “contact point” of La Poste, etc. .). While the public company was built around its public service missions, these now represent only an expensive branch that must be got rid of.
On the other, the endless austerity cure: successive governments want to make public companies profitable to compensate and increase gifts to finance and therefore push them to be ultra-profitable. He wants La Poste (100% public) to be transformed into a “bancassurance” like any other in order to receive more dividends.
Hence the decline in the quality and commodification of missions, hence the loss of sense of the profession suffered by postal workers.
This is facilitated by the last three-year Post-State-AMF contract which no longer grants decision-making power to the mayor, outside the priority districts of the city and mountainous area, but a simple advisory “opinion”.
Despite everything, the balance of power between users and staff and elected representatives pays off as well in small towns like Castéra-Verduzan (1,000 inhabitants) which has kept its office open on Saturdays, as in large towns such as in Paris 20th district which saw La Poste Mortier saved and in Val-de-Marne where La Poste is reviewing the reduction in schedules.
It is by dint of citizen mobilizations, strikes and political power struggles that we will succeed in raising awareness of the importance of access to quality public services for everyone everywhere. Now is the time to mobilize to defend and develop our public services, our common good, and include them in the presidential debate!
Michel Jallamion
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