Change and Resistance in the Royal Mail: Dispatches from the 2022/2023 Postal Workers’ Strike
通过资深邮政工人卡尔的亲身经历，揭示皇家邮政自2013年私有化后，新技术如何加剧劳动强度、侵蚀工人自主性与身心健康，以及工人如何坚守公共服务精神、抵制变革。
This article presents the experiences of ‘Karl’, a veteran postal worker and trade union organiser. Karl’s story outlines the impact of the myriad changes that have happened to the postal service and to the working life of postal workers since the privatisation of the Royal Mail in 2013. Karl highlights how new technologies – typically associated with the ‘gig economy’ – have permeated a formerly ‘low tech’, ‘traditional’ sector and have been used to intensify the labour process and discipline the workforce. Karl outlines the profound impact these changes have had on the postal workforce: eroding their autonomy, destroying their ‘leisure in work’ and affecting their physical and mental health. Karl’s story also demonstrates the persistence of the ‘public service ethos’ in the Royal Mail despite privatisation. Workers argued that the ‘modernisation’ of the postal service had in fact led to the neglect of the universal mail service and the attendant erosion of the historic community function and status of the postal worker.