My Take On The Royal Mail Strikes
So unless you’ve been living on a parallel universe with a great mail service, you can’t have helped but hear about the Royal Mail strikes that are threatening to bring Christmas as we know it to a stand still. Royal mail staff voted overwhelmingly last week for nationwide action, escalating a dispute which has already caused widespread disruption to postal services, in a row over pay, working conditions and reform.
Lets get this straight, the workers know exactly what they are doing by striking at this time of year. On the first day, mail centre staff and drivers will strike. The next day it will be delivery and collection staff meaning maximum disruption to service whilst each employee only loses one days pay. Whether these workers are right to strike or not isn’t for me to involve myself in, it’s how it has been dealt with by the leaders at Royal Mail that really frustrates me.
There are over 2.5 million unemployed people in the UK, a good majority of who would give an arm to get themselves back into employment, and we’re accepting these people walking out and striking over conditions THEIR union agreed to previously? If it were my business, anybody who walked out would be out on their ear with the option to reapply for thier jobs along with the rest of the unemployed people.
Sadly it isn’t as simple as that as the Royal Mail is owned by the government, a government who are badly struggling to stay in power come the next election and to take such a stance would probably mean the little hope they have left of staying in power would be out of the window, a sign we should privatise the Royal Mail maybe?
But what have the Royal Mail actually done to resolve the strikes? 40 days of solid chat with the union hasn’t resolved the issue so are they expecting another 40 days of chat will? The time for chat is never over, but you need to also take action. Bringing in unskilled tempory staff (which would have come in for Christmas anyway) has done little to stop the millions of letters / parcels stacking up in the extra warehouses they’ve hired to do little more than store them in.
When a business has such a monopoly on a sector (in this case mail delivery) like the Royal mail has, it has to do something pretty dumb to lose that overnight, something the Royal Mail are going to educate the world as to how to achieve at this rate. Whilst the Internet, particularly email, has been blamed for the problems facing the Royal Mail in recent years, it’s actually the Internet and the emergence of Ecommerce which has kept it going with such strengths, but maybe the royal Mail haven’t understood this and adapted?
The strikes have meant that retailers just won’t send their parcels through Royal Mail with the likes of Amazon, John Lewis, Tesco and a mass of other major retailers have simply switched to alterior courier companies, many of whom are cheaper to send with then the Royal Mail.
Here’s how I’d have handled it, rightly or wrongly…. I’d have simply stopped all services to EVERYONE other than my business customers. No pick ups from post boxes, no non business services at post offices, nothing.
I’d have visited my top 1000 customers and guaranteed them that their mail will be delivered without delay as usual, communicating to the rest of businesses that services will be as normal for them. Why? Simply because now that John Lewis, Amazon and everyone has left, who’s to guarantee that they are going to come back when there are cheaper services with the same convenience available to business customers? So if the Royal Mail only serviced it’s business customers, mail would be at a manageable level, I’d have just about the right number of experienced staff to keep it ticking over and we wouldn’t have these warehouses dotted around the country full of undelivered mail from a week ago.
As a consumer I’d rather Royal Mail had taken this action. At the moment I can send something, but never know if or when its going to get there, I’d rather than just stop accepting mail, that way I know where I stand.
Me, you and anybody who wants to send a postcard or a birthday card are going to be pretty annoyed by not being able to send it through Royal Mail, but other than a handful of people who will take it to heart and never use the Royal Mail again, we would return to them once the strike action was resolved simply because it’s convenient. Throwing a letter in a postbox is the everyday, it’s cheaper than alternative deliverers and we would return to doing it straight afterwards because of this, the alternatives just aren’t as convenient.
The only way a successor to the petrol car is ever going to work, is when it can be fuelled just like a petrol car, or as conveniently…
There would also be a massive pressure then on the staff at the Royal Mail who are striking because their friends, family, associates wouldn’t be able to use a service their working for…. because of their strike action. It would completely turn the tables on the strikers because the royal Mail would have a manageable workload.
No I wouldn’t be popular, but i’d be running a profitable service and I’d be being honest with all of my customers by saying “sorry guys, but whilst these strikes are going on we just can’t take your mail”, honesty goes a long way you know.
January 20th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
WOW!!! I am speechless… you ROCK. I hope this goes far and wide, you deserve it.