Has anyone sat down to work out how much long term business Royal Mail is losing as a result of the ongoing strikes – strikes which are again being extended. Back in the days when Royal Mail held a monopoly, perhaps striking was effective – but in the present climate, with Royal Mail already struggling to compete, they are striking their employer out of business, people will go elsewhere.

Take me as an example, last week Amazon failed to deliver an express parcel to me when they said – not through any fault of theirs, but because of the strike action. However as per their policy they repaid the fee. Another letter that was supposed to arrive either Friday or Saturday finally turned up on Tuesday. As a result, when today I needed to have something shipped, and the site gave me a choice of Royal Mail or DHL for next day delivery – I opted for DHL. It cost a few pence more, but at least I had some confidence it would actually arrive next day.

Royal Mail has already lost the Amazon second class contract – if they carry on like this I can certainly see the express delivery contract going too – even the government themselves are turning away from Royal Mail!

I can certainly understand staff wanting to be paid more, but Royal Mail was losing customers before the strikes started – and this is only making things worse. Is putting your employer out of business really the way to go? Ultimately it won’t hurt the management – they’ll have no problems moving on elsewhere if the company hits more serious trouble. The people it hits are the general public who have no choice over who delivers to their doorstep, and the postal workers themselves – if the company loses business, it is they who will lose their jobs.