I dislike militant workers with a passion. Fair enough, employee rights are important but there is a much wider issue here. Paralysing a country by calling on strikes to pull your staff out of sorting offices, railway infrastructure, fuel depots, etc. is unnacceptable and shows the ugly face of Socialism. Many of these strikes are due to pensions and “modern working practices”. By “modern working practices”, read “essential changes to remain competitive in a challenging marketplace and maybe doing a little more work or at a different time”. As far as I am concerned, if you are employed, you do what your manager says. If you don’t like it, you know where the door is … in this recession there are millions that would love to be able to pass you on the way out.

Royal Mail are currently being held to ransom by the CWU, who cite modern working prcatices and concerns with the pension fund as being reasons for the strike. Maybe if you read this slowly you might understand what they cannot, I assume because it is quite a complex proposition. The Royal Mail is in a highly competitive marketplace, is extremely expensive to operate and must find efficiencies to fund the pension fund. By walking out at a particularly difficult time of year, the CWU are actually making the lot of Royal Mail and its employees worse. So if they don’t manage to crush Royal Mail, here are some ideas you should try yourself in this modern technology-driven world that the CWU haven’t quite grasped

•Favour Internet shopping sites that use couriers to deliver your order. John Lewis is one example. If they don’t email their support desk to ask why they don’t provide the option.
•LoveFilm is an excellent way to access thousands of rented movies, but it requires the postal system to work. Until the UK catches up to the US and more providers get on board with internet-distributed movies, LoveFilm currently have a beta Watch-on-line service which allows you to watch films as part of your subscription, and for free for high-end subscriptions. Or, use XBox Video Marketplace (or your preferred console, if available) to download and watch films.
•Don’t send letters, postcards or cards. Use Facebook and Email.
•Don’t invoice your customers using paper, send invoices by email or by fax.
•Needless to say, don’t use Venda/shopiom.com to purchase products from the Isle of Man. If you’re a resident, go down to Strand Street. If not, go support a real shop and tell them you’re shopping “in the physical” because of Royal Mail’s strike.
•Many companies now offer electronic billing. Turn on e-billing and log into their web-site to check your account and make your payments.
•If you have bulk mailing to do, send it using a competitor, such as UKMail. They still need the Royal Mail to get to the door, but a message will be sent that strike action is incompatible with current market and economic forces.

The frustrating thing about this action is that this will not just work to crush Royal Mail, it will create serious issues for the smaller online retailers that operate small web sites or services under the eBay or Amazon marketplace schemes. What is a great way for people at home to make good use of their time and work from home and contribute to the economy will be extinguished if this action continues.