Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

For a start, it's an early example of the gig economy. Where instead of being employees, running a publicly-owned post office, local postmasters were forced to operate as independent small business owners. To which the UK Post Office was a monopsony supplier of postal services, under the terms of a take-it-or-leave-it contract. Lumping the postmasters with full financial and legal liability.

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Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

Imposing this bossware system meant that the UK Post Office didn't have to trust the postmasters with the running of their own post office. But to avoid trusting the decent, honest people who remained or became postmasters, even under those conditions, they had to trust Fujitsu corporation. With the running of *all* post offices.

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Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

Spoiler alert! Fujitsu turned out to be deeply untrustworthy. But instead of trying to hold this giant tech corporation accountable for the failures of the system they provided, it was easier for the Post Office corporation to take their pound of flesh out of postmasters who'd done nothing wrong. Thousands were bankrupted, hundreds were coerced into plea bargains that resulted in criminal convictions - even prison time - despite a total lack of evidence of wrongdoing.

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Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

This brings us to the third things this case is a classic example of: corporate "outsourcing". A NewSpeak word if every I saw one.

In practice, as in this case, it usually means devolving responsibilities without the power to fulfill them. So executives can "outsource" blame for any failures to "contractors" or "consultants", while still holding total dictatorial power over policy right down to the most local level.

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Strypey
@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

"Outsourcing" the running of post offices forced individual postmasters to negotiate contracts with a national institution.

Without any of the opportunities for collective bargaining they would have had as employees of the Post Office. Nor any of the leverage that market competition would have given them if the Post Office had to compete with other upstream suppliers.

So they were easily coerced into using the Fujitsu bossware. With no freedom to replace it, or even audit its effects.

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