In France, the Post Office is the second public service sector – after France Telecom – to undergo profound changes in order to aim for profits and profitability. Under the watchful eye of the E.U. and the approval of French governements from the right as well as the left, all postal services (mail, parcels, savings and financial products) will be open to competition and wetting the appetites of many rivals in France and abroad, particularly Danish and German.
These changes demand above all a profound transformation of the state of mind of the company’s employees who are now encouraged to bring in a higher turnover. This “improvement of sales capacity” for the employees demands of them certain professional ‘contorsions’ and entails human and psychological problems in some cases. This new commercial attitude is a far cry from the image most French citizen still have of a sector they consider a “public service”. But for how long?