Royal Mail's new owners have wasted no time before deciding to convert jobs into profits by axing 1,600 posts.

The concept of public service has no place in today's Royal Mail. Profit maximisation is what private shareholders demand.

They have barely digested the feast served up to them by Business Secretary Vince Cable when he flogged off shares at a special knockdown price.

Cable insisted that the price was fair because he had been told by his advisers from the finance sector that this was what the market would bear.

Either his naivety got the better of him or he was not bothered that City speculators would make a killing from a share price that was little more than half the level at which Royal Mail shares are currently trading.

Whichever it is, he destroyed a successful public corporation and helped to further enrich the tiny financial elite whose greed and adventurism sent the economy into freefall in 2008.

Just as vital public services and public-sector workers' pay and pensions were chosen to be slashed as the cost of bailing out the bankers, so 1,600 Royal Mail staff will pay the price for City slickers' dividend payouts.

Royal Mail insists that front-line delivery staff will not be affected because the axe will be applied selectively to managerial grades at Royal Mail HQ.

This smacks of classic divide-and-rule tactics - reassure rank-and-file staff that their jobs are safe so that they keep their heads down about senior grades being thrown to the wolves.

Then when the company comes for the pay, jobs and conditions of delivery staff in the months to come, managerial and supervisory staff will have no reason to stand by them.

Trade unionists have the slogan Unity is Strength inscribed on their banners and that sentiment remains valid.

Those who have got their grubby hands on this iconic public service are concerned only with squeezing as much surplus value as possible out of the workforce.

It's not just corporate shareholders but top management, where pressure is already building to encourage the preposterous idea that Royal Mail chief executive Moya Greene, who raked in £1.5 million last year, is underpaid.

Her sidekick, Royal Mail chairman Donald Brydon, has claimed that such a supposed pittance could lead to other companies head-hunting Greene and paying her the fortune she is worth.

This is the same old story from the City ever since Margaret Thatcher presided over the Big Bang three decades ago, opening the way for overseas, mainly US, institutions to set up camp in London and encouraging US-style rewards for corporate top brass.

The income gap between the gilded elite and the poor bloody infantry is widening all the time.

Public service ethics fly out the window with every successive privatisation as personal enrichment for the few takes over.

The problem is not, as shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna suggested earlier this year, that Royal Mail privatisation was "botched" but that it took place at all.

Had Labour pledged, prior to the giveaway, to renationalise the industry, it could have stymied the whole scheme.

Failure to do so means that Royal Mail staff and service users will face a future of cost-saving measures designed to boost profits until the industry is returned to public ownership.

Privatisation is bad for workers and the public and must be ended as soon as possible.