The postmen are going on strike, and the news story about it didn’t really say why. On the postal union’s site there was a Message to the Public which I didn’t find persuasive. They talked about how they were faced with the prospect of arriving at work and being told to do a completely different job to the one they usually do and of having their hours of work changing from day to day. These are things that I and many other people have been used to for years. They also talked about how Royal Mail want to reduce their pension benefits and increase their retirement age.  At the moment the Royal Mail pension scheme is so expensive to run that Royal Mail have to pay an extra 730 million pounds a year into it in addition to its member’s contributions. The CWU are in the enviable position of having the government underwrite their pension scheme if Royal Mail eventually go bust. Meanwhile final-salary pension schemes are closing in most companies in the UK.

So I don’t really feel very sympathetic towards the postal workers. In attempting to explain their grievances they have simply highlighted how out-of-touch with the real-world they are. Since their members’ pensions are protected if Royal Mail become insolvent maybe they’re calculating that it would be better to protect their cushy benefits and drive the company under than it would be to negotiate a less advantageous deal. It is of course the job of a union to protect its members’ interests, but sometimes that involves looking at the long rather than the short-term and even the CWU recognises that the current pension scheme is too expensive.

The amazing popularity of online shopping should have been a bonanza for the Royal Mail but instead they are in deeper trouble than ever. This may well be because the management is useless, or it may be because the organisation is bureaucratic and inflexible and many of the people who work there are unimaginative jobsworths, I have no way of knowing. In any case, this strike won’t help their situation. Like Millie Banerjee of Postwatch, I find it hugely disappointing to watch a great British institution tear itself apart. But on the other hand, maybe the demise of the Royal Mail will create a brilliant opportunity for a new, much better mail service. Here’s some things I’d like them to offer:

• Destination tracking – Every time a parcel addressed to me is processed they should check to see if it is too big for the letter box or if it needs a signature. If that’s the case they could send me an email or text asking if they should deliver it the next day or on some other day when I am going to be at home.
• People who are at home all the time could act as mini local post offices. Big parcels for anyone in their street would be left with them at the start of the day, outgoing parcels could be collected at the end of the day.
• Tracking the delivery man. It would be so easy to put a GPS receiver on each delivery person and then track them so that I could see an ETA for them.
• Smarter redelivery. I’m going out for the day but I still want my eBay parcel to be there when I get home so I go to their site and ask for all today’s mail to be delivered to my friend up the road.
• Parcel aggregation. It’s daft for several delivery companies to all be calling at the same address. Why don’t they set up a clearing-house for data and then they could all deliver each other’s parcels.

Crikey, I could go on all day with this. Anyone fancy going into business?