This postal strike will only deliver failure

This postal strike will only deliver failure
24 May 2001
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Threat of national postal strike as wildcat action cripples deliveries
New Post Office regime led to discontent among workers
If strikes had a kamikaze rating, the current wildcat stoppages by thousands of postal workers across the country would rank close to the top of the list. Signs of waning in-house support for more Tube strikes suggest that London Underground employees are belatedly realising the risks involved in industrial action aimed at hurting customers who have nothing to do with the dispute in question. The difference is that while long-suffering users of the Tube have nowhere else to turn, consumers of the mail service increasingly do.
In many respects, this postal dispute is a throwback to the 1970s. The labour-intensive Royal Mail, by far the largest of the few nationalised concerns that remain, has long been a bastion of old-fashioned union power and old-fashioned management shortcomings as well. There is a suitably catch-all grievance, in this case “changed working patterns”, and bloody-minded refusal by those taking part to co-operate with an independent review team and delay any action until the team had made its report.
The possibility that, as so often in the bad old days, wildcat action could fuse with an official stoppage by 15,000 postmen only adds to the retro feel of the dispute. Small wonder that only last week, the Royal Mail’s regulator, Martin Stanley, threw up his hands in despair that “this organisation is simply incapable of change”. What the strikers forget, however, is that the year is 2001, not 1971 and that what they are doing may well jeopardise the jobs they are attempting to defend.
Here we are not talking about outright privatisation of the postal service (though a powerful case can be made for Britain to follow the example of the Netherlands and Germany). The risk for now is more straightforward of losing business to competitors. These are not just electronic rivals such as e-mail. As Mr Stanley warned union activists, almost half of Royal Mail revenues come from 50-odd major customers, notably banks, building societies and government departments, who would be delighted to take their business elsewhere.
Every day the dispute continues will increase the pressure on the regulator to open up the postal-service market. If so, the consequences are predictable. The Royal Mail will lose business, and be forced to close services and lay off workers. The sooner striking postal workers realise that their antisocial action is not only irresponsible but self-defeating, the better for them, as well as for us.