This paper aims to investigate the trade union movement fighting actions in the Post Office in Alagoas between 1985 and 2002, identifying, through the process of Brazilian democratization, causes that led to the organization of these workers class. Concerning to documentation for research, we worked with the newsletters of the Association of the Post Office Employees in Alagoas (ASCOR), the Labor Union in Postal and Telegraph Company in Alagoas (SINTECT-AL), local widely circulated newspapers in the 1980’s and 1990’s, as well as photographs, minutes, letters and other documents from the Labor Union files in the Post and Telegraph Company in Alagoas. It was addressed the economic issues of the investigated period and the administrative model inherited from the military who were in charge of the Post Office between the 1970’s and 1980’s. The 1980’s is presented as adecade characterized by a political opening, by an explosion of strikes in various workers categories, the emergence of unions and various workers associations of, that may be remembered by the resurgence of "combative" trade unionism in "opposition" to the bureaucratic union structure in Brazil. Therefore, this paper aims to expose the actions, progress, dilemmas and challenges of the Postal Services workers in Alagoas between 1985 and 2002, a period that begins with the democratization process in Brazil going to the eight years of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso government (1995-2003), when it was attempted to approach the relationship, in this period of government, with the trade union movement of the Post Office. / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta dissertação tem por objetivo investigar as ações de luta do movimento sindical nos Correios de Alagoas entre 1985 e 2002, identificando durante o processo da redemocratização brasileira as causas que levaram a organização de classe desses trabalhadores. Quanto à documentação para as pesquisas, utilizamos os boletins informativos da Associação dos Empregados dos Correios em Alagoas (ASCOR), do Sindicato dos Trabalhadores na Empresa de Correios e Telégrafos em Alagoas (SINTECT-AL), jornais locais e de grande circulação na década de 1980 e 1990, além de fotografias, atas, cartas e outros documentos existentes nos arquivos do Sindicato dos Trabalhadores na Empresa de Correios e Telégrafos em Alagoas. Abordamos as questões econômicas do período investigado e o modelo administrativo herdado dos militares que estiveram no comando dos Correios entre as décadas de 1970 e 1980. Os anos de 1980 se apresentaram como uma década caracterizada pela abertura política, por uma explosão de greves em várias categorias de trabalhadores, pelo aparecimento das centrais sindicais e de diversas associações de trabalhadores, podendo ser lembrados pelo ressurgimento do sindicalismo ―combativo‖ em ―oposição‖ à burocrática estrutura sindical no Brasil. Portanto, o presente trabalho visa expor as ações, os avanços, os dilemas e desafios dos trabalhadores dos Correios em Alagoas entre 1985 e 2002, período que se inicia com o processo de redemocratização do Brasil indo até os oito anos dos governos do presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003), quando procuramos abordar as relações, nesses dois governos, com o movimento sindical dos Correios.

E-commerce technologies have many possible applications both in commercial and non-commercial operations. The development and implementation of these applications is on the increase especially by government and its agencies, for the delivery of services. Specific to this study is the distribution of old age pension benefits to recipients that reside in the rural areas of South Africa. Of importance to this study are the factors that promote and impinge on the development, implementation and acceptance of these applications. A specific project, the Pension Biometric Project was implemented by the South African Post Office in line with the government's initiatives of improving service delivery, and in response to the encroaching digital economy. The research problem is to investigate the pensioners' perception and their experience of three areas of this project, its implementation, its acceptance and its uses and impact. The research was conducted in the constructivist paradigm, using the case study research method. Three data collection methods were used, i.e. a document study of SAPO project documentation, on-site observations and interviews with pensioners. It was found that despite problems in implementation, the pensioners were accepting of the new system, although they were ignorant of the functionalities of the smart card. Consequently, few pensioners were making use of the banking facilities of the card, or had changed their economic behaviour. The study has also found that two themes are overriding all findings of the study. These two themes are ignorance and dignity. Ignorance has had a causal effect on adoption of the smart cards and dignity has been found to be a result of the project. The overriding implication of this study is that pensioners' ignorance around issues of service delivery by government and its agencies needs to be eradicated, otherwise there is no reliable way of measuring efforts against actual delivery. Also, the fact that dignity has emerged as an overriding theme needs to be deliberately strengthened, and maybe even driven as a specified objective of the Pension Biometric Project. Recommendations in this regard are provided as well as ideas for further research.

Poverty is an extremely significant issue for Indian society with some estimates suggesting that up to 75% of the Indian population may be poor and deprived of basic necessities to sustain a normally healthy life. Microfinance and social protection are considered as important micro-level strategies to reduce poverty. Literature reveals that both strategies suffer from significant service delivery constraints causing exclusion of a large majority of poor households from access to microfinance, and inclusion and exclusion errors and elite capture of social protection programmes. This research explored whether outreach of microfinance and impact of social protection may be enhanced if microfinance products are built on the provisions of social protection for the poor households, and services of microfinance and social protection are synergistically delivered leveraging on the strengths of each other. The research further explored if it is feasible to employ a State institution, India Post, towards such synergistic service delivery. In order to further these research objectives, financial needs of poor households were estimated, and structures and mechanisms causing the exclusion of the poor from microfinance were investigated, by drawing empirical data from three Indian states. States were sampled while acknowledging that the poor are largely excluded from microfinance in two states of UP and Gujarat, and are almost totally included in the state of AP. This provided me with an opportunity to identify structures and mechanisms excluding the poor from microfinance provisions in UP and Gujarat, and contrast it with the situation in AP to further refine and enrich our understanding. Philosophical basis for design and methodology for this research is provided by critical realism, according to which the goal of social research is to understand the world in order to change it for better. The research is primarily based on the data collected through qualitative research methods as such methods are more suited than quantitative methods to critical realistic intensive studies, attempting to uncover underlying structures and mechanisms causing a social phenomenon. Research findings suggest that the financial needs of poor households in UP and Gujarat either remain unmet, or are met through informal mechanisms which are costly and exploitative. Poor are also not able to entirely access their entitled benefits from social protection programmes; as such programmes generate their own financial needs, which remain largely unmet. It was observed that social protection programmes have a favourable political environment in India and are being increasingly employed as a means to fight poverty. Such programmes therefore constitute an important aspect of the financial environment of the poor. Microfinance programme in AP reaches the poor partly because it is also meeting the financial needs generated by the provisions of social protection and thus the poor households find it useful. Poor also become attractive clients for microfinance due to the assured benefits they receive from the social protection programmes. Thus it addresses both demand and supply side constraints which keep a majority of the poor out of the ambit of microfinance in UP and Gujarat. Such social protection-linked service delivery of microfinance was further observed to be enhancing the impact of social protection as well as of microfinance. It is further argued that India Post is suitably located to deliver such social protection-linked microfinance services due to its close proximity to the rural population, and its personnel being known to and trusted by the local communities. India Post network also has a long and rich experience of delivering financial services. Being a government department, it is in a better position than similarly placed agencies such as banks and NGOs, to coordinate with other government departments offering social protection. Moreover, it has a valuable information-capital on the households that can be leveraged to efficiently identify the prospective recipients of the social protection programmes.

The aim of my diploma thesis is to design and make out a design documentation to show the look of new post office building. The plot is located in the cadastral area of Lesná and the parcel numbers are 1344/1, 1344/3, 1344/4 and 1345. The building is located on a flat terrain. The building consists of two above-ground floors and one underground floor. On the first floor are public areas, post offices and the background of the post office. On the second there is the office of the director, office of the representative, meeting room and facilities for the post office employees. In the underground floor there is technical equipment of the building, archive and storeroom of post office. The construction system is made in a combination of monolithic skeleton and ceramic bricks. It is designed with a flat roof wich is drained by with roof gullies.

The employer, the state, long had the right to unilaterally set wages and determine working conditions. The goverment employees lacked the right to negotiate and sign agreements and to strike. This dissertation focuses on government employees, analyzing their identity and the strategies they chose to deal with their relationship to their employer. The perspective is that of the railway stations staff, postmen and other low-ranking civil servants employed by the Swedish National Railway and the Royal Post Office 1897-1937. The state became bureaucratized during the latter part of the 19th century. Bureaucratization of the goverment´s status as employer was necessary, but at the same time not sufficient to meet the demands of securing operations and of loyal personnel. Therefore bureaucratization was combined with other strategies, especially patriarchalism at the beginning of the 20th century. Through the growth of a discourse concerning "we in the department" strong bonds were created between superiors and subordinates in the department. Later the bureacracy was combined with corporative elements in the employer strategy of the state. For the Railway Workers´Union and the Postal Workers´Union a political strategy became the main and natural choice, considering the employer´s position of superiority. The political role of the employer was a foundation for the state employees´choise of strategy. This political strategy was one of servility and respect at the beginning of the 20th century, but later on borrowed elements of and actual content from trade union and professional strategies. The ideal for a state employee became that of a man with regular post who wore a uniform. There was a close connection between the collective identity of lower civil servants and the identity they were ascribed by their employer. Because of the strenght of the masculine identity this bore the characteristics of brotherhood.

M.Tech. / The South African Post Office or SAPO is the national postal service of South Africa and is owned by South African government. It employs 17000 people and operates more than 2400 postal outlets throughout the country. The history of SAPO can be tracked back to over 500 years. In 1994 South Africa was readmitted to the universal union following the end of apartheid. SAPO currently operates under a 25 year license granted by the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA) and in terms of this must provide a universal service to all citizens of the country. The monthly service delivery performance target as set out by the postal regulator (ICASA) is 98%. With the current pressures of having to deliver services according to the license agreement with the regulator, it becomes imperative that SAPO has to improve its business process in order to enable it to meet and exceed set delivery standards with the aim of satisfying its customer’s needs. Throughout the 1990’s the South African Post Office (SAPO) has been offering communication system that was used even before cell phones were introduced and it is still one of the communications channels (SAPO history). As a result there has been increased interest in the application of total quality management (TQM) principles. The emergence of the revised ISO 9000 standard (9001:2008) now permits the South African Post Office gain advantages to improve their performance in a manner that can be measured and monitored precisely.

When man first learned to write, his primary objective was to have his message delivered as quickly as possible. Consequently, in ancient civilizations runners transported clay tablets from city to city, and ships sailed the known seas and rivers carrying in their holds precious cargoes of the written word. As methods of transportation were improved, the speed and safety by which communication could be relayed was likewise advanced. In fact, within the evolution of transportation progress it is possible to trace the importance and the influence of the mails. Runners were succeeded by horsemen or coaches, primitive board by modern steamers, horses and coach by locomotives, and now comes the airplane. ... The story of the Air Mail Service is the story of the conquest of a new frontier, a frontier which, like all its predecessors, has yielded grudgingly but surely to Man's indomitable courage and resourceful intelligence. The story is filled with visionary dreams, bitter disappointments, and encouraging realizations. It contains elements of romance, heroism, and intrigue, and throughout its course runs the thread of Man's unquenchable desire to overcome those physical barriers which have so long restricted him to mere surface travel upon the earth. To the casual observer this particular phase of mail transportation is comparatively new, but viewed from the perspective of history it is merely the modern link in the long chain of mail communication devices. Thus, the story is not ended, but is in a constant state of expansion, and the present phase of it would seem to indicate that the future will produce a chapter more startling than any that has yet been revealed.

Cette recherche ambitionne de comprendre comment les organisations publiques en mutation ont intégré à leur stratégie l’intention qui vise à « placer l’usager au cœur de l’organisation » dans leur management de la relation de service et à travers les outils mis en œuvre pour traduire ce discours en actes de management et d’expliquer comment ces choix en matière de gestion de la relation de service avec les usagers-clients affectent le sens du travail des agents en contact.L’analyse de la littérature s’articule autour de trois champs théoriques : le concept de la relation de service mobilisant des champs pluridisciplinaires, notamment celui de la sociologie, du marketing et de l’économie des services, le management des organisations publiques et plus particulièrement des organisations publiques en mutation dans un contexte d’ouverture à la concurrence et les modèles du sens au travail et de la construction du sens dans les organisations. L’objectif étant de comprendre comment la relation de service prend une place de plus en plus importante dans les organisations publiques comme préoccupation managériale dans un souci de développement de la performance et de mise en adéquation des besoins des usagers-clients avec les services délivrés par les organisations publiques.Deux études de cas ont été sélectionnées pour observer ces changements, le cas de La Poste et de la SNCF, deux anciens monopoles publics, qui sont ancrés dans les représentations collectives comme des institutions du quotidien des français et qui s’appuient sur une culture forte du service public. Ces études de cas ont été menées dans une démarche de recherche qualitative qui vise à faire émerger du discours des dirigeants, des managers de proximité et des agents en contact, les perceptions de ces outils et de ces changements dans la relation de service et les effets de ces outils sur le travail et plus particulièrement le sens du travail des agents.Les études de cas ont fait apparaître des résultats contre-intuitifs par rapport aux structures organisationnelles des deux institutions étudiées. Ainsi, les résultats permettent de montrer comment le choix de la normalisation et de l’accroissement du contrôle à La Poste développe une approche du service par la règle et la standardisation du travail de la relation de service qui crée une rupture culturelle dans les pratiques des postiers attachés à leur travail comme vecteur de lien social et au développement de perceptions de non-sens dans leur travail voire d’une certaine servitude qui les met dans des situations de souffrance au travail / This research seeks to understand how the public organizations in change integrated into their strategy the intention which aims at “placing the user in the middle of the organization” in their management of the relation of service and through the tools implemented to translate this speech into acts of management and to explain how these choices as regards management of the relation between service and the user-customers affect the direction of the work of the agents in contact.The analysis of the literature is articulated around three theoretical fields: the concept of the relation of service mobilizing of the multi-field fields, in particular that of sociology, the marketing and the economy of the services, the management of the public organizations and more particularly of the public organizations in change in a context of opening to competition and models of the direction to work and construction of the direction in the organizations. The objective being to understand how the relation of service takes an increasingly important place in the public organizations like managerial concern in a preoccupation of development of the performance and a setting in adequacy of the needs for the user-customers with the services delivered by the public organizations.Two case studies were selected to observe these changes, the case of the Post office and the SNCF, two old public monopolies, which are anchored in the collective representations like institutions of the daily newspaper of French and who is based on a strong culture of the public service. These case studies were conducted in a approach of qualitative research which aims at making emerge speech of the leaders, managers of proximity and agents in contact, perceptions of these tools and these changes in the relation of service and the effects of these tools on the work and more particularly the direction of the work of the agents.The case studies revealed against-intuitive results compared to the organisational structures of the two studied institutions. Thus, the results make it possible to show how the choice of the standardization and the increase in the control in the Post office develops an approach of the service by the rule and the standardization of the work of the relation of service which creates a cultural rupture in the practices of the post-office employees attached to their work like vector of social link and with the development of perceptions of nonsense in their work even of a certain constraint which puts them in situations of suffering at work.With the SNCF the choice to place the relation of service like a development project of competences multi-trades and in hierarchical co-education, with the concern Co-of conceiving the tools and the hot lines generates a cohesion of the teams and the valorization of a collective culture cheminote. The passage of a culture technician to a culture of service was approached while placing the internal customer like focal point of the programs to make in kind diffuse a common direction of the relation with the user-customer in phase with the reality of the agents. Lastly, we propose, a discussion and a conclusion to exceed the perimeter of research and to place this research like the starting point of a work on the relation of service and relational work in the public organizations

The nearest neighbour problem is of practical significance in a number of fields. Often we are interested in finding an object near to a given query object. The problem is old, and a large number of solutions have been proposed for it in the literature. However, it remains the case that even the most popular of the techniques proposed for its solution have not been compared against each other. Also, many techniques, including the old and popular ones, can be implemented in a number of ways, and often the different implementations of a technique have not been thoroughly compared either. This research presents a detailed investigation of different implementations of two popular nearest neighbour search data structures, KDTrees and Metric Trees, and compares the different implementations of each of the two structures against each other. The best implementations of these structures are then compared against each other and against two other techniques, Annulus Method and Cover Trees. Annulus Method is an old technique that was rediscovered during the research for this thesis. Cover Trees are one of the most novel and promising data structures for nearest neighbour search that have been proposed in the literature.

Charles Bukowski devoted his writing career to turning his own life into poetry and prose. In poems and stories about his experiences as one of the working poor in post war America, and in those depicting his experiences as a writer of the American underground, Bukowski represents himself as both a literary and social outsider. Bukowski expresses an alternative literary aesthetic through his fictional persona, Henry Chinaski, who struggles to overcome his suffering in a world he finds absurd, and who embarks on a quest for freedom in his youth to which he remains committed all his life. This thesis examines Charles Bukowski's autobiographical fiction with a specific emphasis on five novels and one collection of short stories. In the novels, Post Office (1970), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982) and Hollywood (1989), and in a number of short stories in the collection Hot Water Music (1983), Bukowski explores different periods of Chinaski???s life with a dark humour, revealing links between Chinaski???s struggle with the absurd and those aspects comprising Bukowski???s alternative aesthetic. The thesis focuses on such aspects of Bukowski???s art as the uncommercial nature of his publishing history, his strong emphasis on literary simplicity, the appearance of the grotesque and Bukowski???s obsession with nonconformity, drinking and sex. These aspects illuminate the distinctive nature of Bukowski???s art and its purpose, which is the transformation of an ordinary life into literature. This thesis argues that Bukowski illuminates possibilities that exist for individuals to create an identity for themselves through aesthetic self-expression. The thesis traces the development of Chinaski's non-conformist personality from Ham on Rye, based on Bukowski's youth in Los Angeles during the Depression, to Hollywood, Bukowski's ironic portrayal of Chinaski's brush with the commercial film industry. Through meeting the many challenges he faced throughout his life with defiance, honesty and an irreverent sense of humour, Bukowski invites readers to identify with his alternative world view. The thesis argues this particular aspect of his writing constitutes his most valuable contribution to twentieth century American fiction.