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French postal workers have been striking this week.

They oppose the possible future privatization of the (state-owned) French post office. More generally, they fear that a profit-seeking mentality will worsen life for postal employees and customers alike.

I’m open-minded when it comes to these arguments, but categorical that the timing is wrong, at least ten years too late. What the post office is and does has changed over the past decade, so much so that I suspect the strikers really are mourning a remembered post office from the past.

Like post offices elsewhere (especially in the USA), French post
offices historically have been drab or dour. Over the summer, workers remade my neighborhood post office. Here’s what it looks like today:

  • There’s a welcoming banner that reads, “The Postal Bank invites you to discover property Loans”. French post offices have long offered banking services. But today, financial services are center-stage. The post office is a bank that happens to sell stamps. The post office apparently has no reticence in promoting mortgages.
  • There’s a central presentation stand that displays merchandise on offer: books, phone cards, gift cards.
  • Postal services are set aside along the periphery of the boutique. It’s easier for a customer to reach a vending machine than a person behind a counter. The mailbox is outdoors.

Under European regulations, the French post office, like most of its neighbors, will soon face competition for delivery of letters under 50 grams (1.75 ounces). Competitors will enter this market in France in 2011.

Competitors have not been idly passing the time. They’ve been gaining experience, profiting from exceptions and loopholes in regulations applicable today. An example is presented by a mass mailing sent to my spouse by the Paris area transit authority, a non-profit public service. As the picture (below) shows, there’s no stamp on the envelope. It was instead “distributed by Alternative Post” (red arrow added). In the place of an address, there’s a geographic code; therein lies the loophole that enables the delivery service to distribute letters under 50 grams.

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