Academic literature on the topic 'Postes – Service des colis'

Les ambulants postaux, apparus au 19e siècle, désignent à la fois les agents de la poste, qui traitent le courrier sur les wagons ferroviaires, et les services sur lesquels ils travaillent. Ils ont progressivement constitué un des piliers essentiels de l'acheminement du courrier, dans le cadre du service public national de la poste, qu'ils ont contribué à développer en le démocratisant. Les agents de ces services qualifiés d'"insalubres" ont cherché à améliorer leur sort en s'affiliant aux mêmes organisations syndicales que les salariés du secteur privé, et en revendiquant un contrat pour clarifier leur relation de travail avec l'Etat. Ils ont trouvé une protection avec la reconnaissance de la représentation collective, dans le cadre du statut des fonctionnaires de 1946, à l'intérieur duquel ils ont fait reconnaître certaines pratiques d'autonomie, notamment en matière d'aménagement du temps de travail. A partir de la fin des années 1960, l'importance des ambulants a diminué progressivement dans le cadre d'une mutation de la poste, inspirée du droit prive, rendue nécessaire par la concurrence, notamment celles des intégrateurs, agissant dans l'espace<br>Travelling post offices, mail-sorting services aboard trains, first appeared in the nineteenth century. The french name for these units, ambulants postaux, refers to both the service and the people who work in it. With time, they became one of the key fixtures, in mail routing and in the public-service structure of the french post office, where their presence led to more widespread access for the public. Employees in these units where working conditions were labelled unhealthy sought to improve their lot by joining the same unions as privates-sector workers and by demanding contracts in order to clarify their ties with the state. The recognition of their collective representaion brought them new rights, when the right of civil servants to unionize was granted, in 1946, while retaining a certain autonomy, particularly around the organization of shift-work and compensatory reduction of overall working hours. Starting in the late sixties, the role of the travelling post

Cette thèse se propose, entre la Révolution et le tournant libéral du second Empire, de traquer la notion de service public dans l'histoire de la poste aux lettres, en utilisant un faisceau d'indices qui est celui des éléments constituant la défmition du servicc public tel qu'elle est issue du XIXe siècle, à savoir la structure, la finalité du service, le régime juridique applicable. En d'autres termes, il s'agit de voir comment l'administration postale progresse vers le service public, comment la question du service public se pose et se matérialise dans le domaine postal. L'étude de ces éléments au cours de la période envisagée a permis de distinguer deux grandes périodes dans cette contribution à l'histoire du service public postal. De la Révolution à l'Empire, l'objectif premier de l'administration postale est de survivre il une conjoncture difficile, tandis que la notion de service public, très polysémique, apparaît régulièrement au cours des débats parlementaires. L'administration postale se stabilise sous l'Empire. De la Restauration au tournant libéral du second Empire, la notion de service public progresse au cœur de l'évolution de la poste aux lettres; si son influence n'est encore qu'officieuse, les discours et interventions autour des amélioratious progressives apportées au service postal créent un lien entre le monopole exploité par l'Etat, l'accès géographique et financier au service, la fonction sociale et le service public. Parallèlement pendant la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, les tribunaux se réfèrent de plus en plus au service public<br>This thesis is aimed at proposing a definition of the public service in the history of the mail Postal Office, between the Revolution and the liberal turning point of the second Empire. This work is based on a number of indications stemming trom elements that constitute the definition of the public service during the 19th century, that is to say, the structure, the aim of the service, the appropriate legal system. In other words, the point is to analyse how the postal administration evolves towards the notion of public service, and how this notion questions itself and becomes operative in the postal field. The research study during the envisaged time trame has highlighted two major periods in this contribution to the history of the postal public service. From the Revolution to the Empire, the first objective for the postal administration, is to outlive an adverse climate, while the highly polysemous notion of public service is trequently debated during parliamentary sessions. The postal administration stabilizes under the Empire regime. From the "Restauration" to the liberal turning point of the second Empire, the notion of the public service gains ground as the mail Postal Office evolves. If its influence is no more than unofficial, the speeches and the interventions about the graduai improvements brought to the postal service create a link between the monopole that the State exploits, the geographic and financial access to the service, the social function and the public service. Concurrently, during the second half of the 19th century, the courts more and more refer to the public service

Étant donne le contexte d'ouverture accrue du marché du courrier à la concurrence, nous nous posons la question de dispositifs alternatifs au monopole, pour garantir la viabilité du service universel postal. Celui-ci consiste en une offre de services postaux de qualité déterminée, fournis de manière permanente en tout point du territoire à des prix abordables pour l'ensemble des utilisateurs. L’organisation du service universel repose sur un réseau universel : sa vocation est de répondre a des besoins très varies en concentrant puis en répartissant des envois très différents. L’équilibre antérieur des opérateurs de service universel européens est aujourd'hui remis en cause par l'évolution de la demande vers des services personnalises, les pressions du marché et les pressions règlementaires sur le monopole. L’analyse et la mesure du cout du service universel permet alors d'appréhender les effets de cette dynamique de marche sur les obligations de service universel. Ainsi nous montrons comment les besoins de financement de l'opérateur pour maintenir le service universel varient en fonction de la situation de marche. La pérennité des obligations de service universel nécessite ensuite d'envisager d'autres modalités de financement (fiscalité générale, fonds de compensation, aides ciblées, etc. ). Les possibilités d'adaptation en matière d'application des obligations de service universel (niveau de prix abordable, niveau de qualité de service) sur un marché libéralise sont également examinées. Elles impliquent en définitive un débat sur la définition et le périmètre du service universel.

This dissertation contributes to the literature and current discussions on the European postal markets and the universal service obligations (USO). It consists of three independent chapters.<p><p>In chapter one, we investigate the consumers' preferences for various kinds of postal services. As such, we begin by reviewing the market and regulatory conditions for Europe and for our case study, Belgium. Then using data provided by the incumbent provider, the Belgian post (Bpost), we estimate demand price elasticities. The data comprises customer transactional information on letter mail, direct mail, parcels & express services, press delivery and value added services for the 2008-2009 period. These categories constitute not only the important lines of services that Bpost offers to its clients but also the main segments that constitute the whole Belgian postal market. As such, and using standard methods, we estimate for each service an equation that explains demand by prices, product varieties (i.e. mixes or combinations of volume, weight, priority and destination, inter alia), income, regulation proxies and other socioeconomic variables. The estimated price elasticities for regulated and partially regulated services are around -1.1, whereas for unregulated segments they fluctuate between -2.1 and -2.8. The lowest price elasticity is obtained for direct mail services (-1.0); the highest ones are associated with value added services (-2.1) and registered mail (-3.3). Price elasticities may be influenced by the cyclical effects during the period of analysis. Therefore, elasticities are higher when compared with the empirical evidence obtained for other countries and through the various methodologies applied over the last decades. The fact that technological substitutes, such as expenditures on telephony and internet access for daily and administrative mail services and, radio and television advertising for direct mail services, could not be accounted for (because there were no data available) may however be considered as a major limitation for the scope of our results. <p><p>In the second chapter, we explore theoretically the effects of the USO on unregulated markets. In particular, we are interested in investigating its welfare effects when the provision of services cannot be technologically separated. We present a model in which there is an incumbent who provides two services: a universal service and a non-USO service, the latter opened to competition. This is the case of letter mail and direct (or bulk) mail, services which have quite different purposes and regulatory frameworks (i.e. the former is fully regulated whereas the latter is liberalized under the current European Internal Market framework), but are jointly produce at some stages of the postal value chain. The USO is simplified to two dimensions, affordability and quality, implemented as a price cap and a minimum quality standard (MQS) for the provision of letter mail services. The latter involves the technological aspects that we are interested in. We find that the definition of the USO plays an important role in organizing markets that are open to competition. When it imposes few quality requirements (low MQS), the incumbent is not cost efficient enough to provide the high-quality variant of bulk mail, allowing its competitors to cream-skim the segment. However, because there are cost economies, the firm's participation in the segment yields a higher average quality of mail services at lower prices. When the USO is too comprehensive (high MQS), the incumbent exhibits large cost economies that ensure a dominant position in the provision of bulk mail services. Consumers are worse off as competition induces too much service differentiation in order to make profitable the provision. Relaxing the definition of the USO mitigates the competitive advantage of the USP and so, yields improvements in welfare. In the absence of access costs, firms will find profitable to participate in the bulk mail segment. However, foreclosure happens if the USO induces the incumbent to exhibit significant fixed costs. Therefore, the USP may end up as the sole supplier of bulk mail services if the definition of the USO imposes too many quality requirements (high MQS). In that case, the authority must balance the welfare gains of defining USO with the welfare losses of the consumers of the contested service. <p><p>Finally, in the third chapter we consider the ownership aspect of the provision of universal services as an incentive to introduce competition. One can further segment the provision between services for customers located in high-cost areas and services for customers located in low-cost areas. Additionally, under the current EU legislation, the supply is divided between upstream activities (e.g. collection and sorting) and downstream activities (i.e. delivery). The provision of upstream activities in high-cost areas remains in hands of the incumbent firm or the owner of the downstream (delivery) network. The upstream provision in low-cost areas is open to competition, but a retailer may be vertically integrated/separated or legally unbundled with the downstream firm. Legal unbundling means, in our model, that the downstream firm and one upstream firm located in the low-cost area belong legally to the same entity entitled to all profits, whom does not have full control rights over the firms' decisions. That is to say, upstream activities and the downstream services will be managed separately under the same ownership. In this framework we analyze the firm's boundaries in terms of competition development and welfare. We implement two criteria to answer questions like, does vertical separation promotes competition (entry of firms) while covers a larger demand than vertical integration? Does vertical integration demand less public funds to cover demand? Does legal unbundling is worse than ownership separation to promote competition? The first criterion is the probability of entry (of the potential upstream firm), which we determine for each modes of ownership. The second criterion is the cost of public funds. It is implemented by defining a loss function as the difference between the expected consumer surplus when the downstream firm chooses an access fee that maximizes its profits and the consumer surplus when access is priced at marginal cost. The use of both criteria let us conclude that efficient entry occurs when the downstream firm is vertically separated or legally unbundled of the retailer providing services in the low-cost area. However, it is under legal unbundling that the access charge takes its lowest value. The highest cost of public transfers is obtained when firms are vertically separated, but the lowest one is attained when firms are legally unbundled. Therefore legal unbundling constitutes the preferred organizational form to induce competition and to reduce the cost of public funds.<br>Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

L'évolution des marchés postaux, du fait de la dynamique du jeu de l'offre et de la demande, a conduit à un processus de dérégulation du marché, par révision des monopoles nationaux et application des règles de la concurrence. Cette transformation de l'environnement externe a été accompagnée d'une adaptation d'ordre règlementaire : le changement de statut de la poste. Cette ancienne administration postale, devenue exploitant public, apparait actuellement une organisation composite. Le caractère hybride du statut de la poste participe à la reconnaissance en son sein de plusieurs formes de coordination : tout en étant chargée d'une mission de service public et bénéficiant de droits exclusifs ou réservés, la poste a aussi pour objet d'assurer des prestations libres sous le régime et dans le respect du jeu de la concurrence. De plus, la majorité du personnel demeure fonctionnaire, dans le cadre du statut de la fonction publique, une autre partie est régie par une convention commune de droit privé. Cette thèse a pour finalité d'analyser les nouvelles règles du jeu et le nouveau jeu organisationnel à la distribution du courrier en adoptant une démarche pluridisciplinaire. Le cadre conceptuel des économies de la grandeur est le principal outil utilisé<br>The postal market evolution leads to a process of deregulation by reason of national monopoly review and competition rules application. The external environment transformation was accompanied by the creation of a new regulation: the change of the post office status. This old administration, which turned a nationalized company, seems to be into a heterogeneous organization. The hybrid nature of the post office status is analyzed in this thesis: the new rules and the new game of this organization have been described. The new regulation understanding is based on the case of the delivery of letters. This economic thesis includes not only a sociological proceeding but also a juridical and historical analysis of the organization