Date of Award

6-2008

Document Type

Union College Only

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

John Zumbrunnen

Language

English

Keywords

letter, attitudes, mail, carriers, employee

Abstract

Although there are parties protesting and proposing privatization of the Postal Service, it is important to gain an understanding of employee attitudes towards privatization. According to European Union directives, all E.U. counties must eliminate national letter mail monopolies in the upcoming years. As a result, countries like Belgium are currently making significant changes within their nationalized postal system. This opportunity allows a comparison of employee attitudes between letter carriers whose organizations are losing their letter mail monopolies to attitudes of USPS letter carriers whose organization is not experiencing such change. Letter carriers in Schenectady County, New York and Antwerp, Belgium responded to anonymous self-addressed stamped surveys. Twenty-one surveys were distributed in Antwerp and twenty were distributed in Schenectady County. The respondents were asked about job performance, job safety, the cost of products and services, the ability to innovate, importance of business mail, and security of the mail. These questions were in reference to their current organization and examine if respondents expect changes if it were privatized. The results illustrate that there is potential to privatize the De Post and the USPS. However, emphasis is noted that all employee attitudes and their insights should be examined if privatization were undertaken.

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