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Service postalSwiss future wants to distribute the mail only 2x per week
The Think Tank offers a radical reform of the yellow giant: mail B would become standard while mail A would become a high -end product.
Will the postman ring only twice a week?
Tamedia AGDistribute the mail to the maximum twice a week from 2030: it is the shock proposal from the Swiss future ideas laboratory that wants to give a big broom in the postal service. Because, he advances on Monday, the current model, with a daily distribution, is no longer suitable for our company. Indeed, the Swiss average now exchanges by smartphone or email, he reads the press online, pays his invoices on the internet and will look for his packages in dedicated places, recalls the think tank.
He therefore proposes that the universal service be limited to mail B, with a distribution by the factor twice a week. Largely sufficient according to him. “While in 2000, each person received 400 letters per year, this figure will drop to 100 in 2030,” he recalls. As for mail A, it would not disappear, but would become a “premium” service not falling under universal service.
This idea goes a little in the same direction as the proposal to reform the order on postal rules, made recently by the Federal Council, and which could deprive mail 60,000 households living in remote areas.
Parcel market open to all
The Think Tank also offers to open the parcel market to competition. And the post offices, “which have generated losses of 1.1 billion francs in ten years,” would simply become access points. “The imposing directives of sectors served in cities and by planning region are no longer adapted to our time,” he notes.
Shared readers, fatalist factor
On the side of the seniors, the idea of receiving letters only twice a week, just like closing postal offices, goes too far: “I still regularly send letters and I pay my bills at the counter”, explains Monique, 77 years old. On the youth side, it goes better: “The mail twice a week is more than enough,” says Daniel, 32. Kevin (18) does not see him any need for a daily distribution: “I have never sent a letter. Everything is done online. And there are withdrawal points everywhere ”. As for this (32 years old), she especially thinks of the factors: “They are the ones who will be the most affected.” On the side of the latter, we know that the profession is doomed to disappear. Samuel, a factor for ten years, includes the need to reduce the workforce in the face of decline in the volume of mail-“but it is still sad to see once again a traditional profession sacrificed on the altar of modernization”, he concludes.
As for the newspapers, no more daily distribution. If the political world wishes to maintain it, “this service should also be the subject of a call for tenders and be remunerated transparent”, proposes Swiss future.
Even payment services pass there. Everyone in Switzerland must have access to a basic account and a digital means of payment, he believes. “If this is not the case, the Confederation should then put this service to the competition via a call for tenders, which would make the costs transparent.”
The divided political world
On the political world, national councilor David Roth (PS/LU), who works for the Syndicom union, disapproves of the Swiss future proposals. “The public postal service will be dismantled and limited to profitable sectors,” he said. “The non-essential services will be provided at higher prices, by less well paid employees,” he criticizes. His colleague Simon Stadler (C/UR), national, also challenges: “It is an attack on public services and the basic needs of our mountain and rural populations,” he said. But their colleague Andri Silberschmidt (PLR/ZH) is favorable: the behavior of people has changed and La Poste must react, he believes. “This is why the restrictions and requirements imposed by political circles must be revised downwards. Otherwise, La Poste will have to be sanitized, which will cost taxpayers dearly. ”
