The Amazonification of Royal Mail and postal worker identity

Postal work has undergone significant transformations with the advent of platformisation that follows on from broader structural changes in the consumption and delivery of communication infrastructure. In this context, an important question is how worker identity is affected, both in terms of sense of self and in terms of ‘who we are’ collectively as an organisation, especially within a sector like postal work that has a history of public service. We investigate this through a case study of Royal Mail based on in-depth interviews with postal workers in the UK. We argue that the organisational features by which postal workers understand and define their identity at Royal Mail are being displaced by features of Amazonification – the mimicking and adoption of Amazon's technologies and organisational culture and practices – which is contributing to a redefinition of postal worker identity and gives rise to new forms of identity struggle. The identity struggle we are pointing to is not purely embedded in processes of privatisation but in the emerging gig economy template and its accompanying algorithmic management techniques. As such, we see a transformation of the features of postal work into those of platform work, and the loss of protection and social purpose that this represents to postal workers. This focus, we contend, is a very significant but largely neglected aspect in current debates on platformisation and the future of work.