On Sept. 2, six trade union federations representing French postal workers announced they would be organizing a national one-day strike and demonstration for Sept. 23 to oppose the privatization of the French postal service, La Poste.
Jean-Paul Bailly, the president of the public company currently under full government control, announced that La Poste would be privatized by 2010. The French constitution says that the state must control at least 50 percent of a public service institution.
Bailly denies that selling nearly half of the company amounts to privatization, but French workers are not falling for it. Daniel Rodriguez, a spokesperson for one of the trade unions involved, said: “They put forward the same guarantees for France Télécom [the national telephone company], and we saw what happened afterwards. Today, the government has a minority stake in France Télécom, thousands of jobs have been axed, the services offered have declined and fees have gone up.”
