A Royal Pain
Looks like British Lord Peter Mandelson’s grand plans to sell of a portion of Royal Mail to Dutch private courier TNT are falling apart before our eyes.
This may serve as a cautionary tale for the dwindling number of people in the U.S. who—at least publicly—still say they believe the free market is the panacea to all the world’s economic problems.
First, there was widespread opposition in the U.K. from postal workers, understandably skeptical about the purity of TNT’s intentions to guard universal postal service. Would Royal Mail-cum-TNT be able pull in windfall profits delivering letters to the Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland, say?
After the workers raised a ruckus, a few Labour party members of Parliament began looking askance at the whole idea of what’s come to be known as the “part-privatization” of the country’s postal service.
But the latest blow came in the past few days when Adam Crozier, Royal Mail’s CEO, accused TNT of stealing customers from its profitable European parcels division. He actually wrote to Mandelson’s department demanding the government take action to stop TNT from further damaging its business, according to wire service reports.
If these allegations turn out to be true, why should anybody in the U.K. trust their mail to TNT?
In December, Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government said it may sell a stake in Royal Mail Group Plc to TNT, in a move that would tap investment needed to prepare the U.K.’s postal service for Europe-wide competition (Direct Newsline, Dec. 16).
True, Royal Mail, just like the U.S. Postal Service, has a lot of problems and antiquated ways of doing business.
But in today’s world, which is suffering deeply from the excesses of the free market, is privatization–part or whole—really the way to go?
