Modern life is rubbish

Ironic, isn’t it? For all Royal Mail’s talk of ‘modernisation’, we’re in for a good, old-fashioned mail strike on October 22 and 23. Oh joy. As if the rolling regional industrial action that has severely affected deliveries in recent months hasn’t been disruptive enough.

I’ve earned the ire of some readers for previously sounding ‘unsympathetic’ towards postal workers. They I do feel for, believe me. Sudden shift changes, pay cuts and the like must be playing havoc with many people’s lives. But at least they still have a job. At last count there’s around 2.47 million Britons who’d give their eye teeth for the opportunity of working odd hours.

As for Royal Mail management and the CWU’s executive… Guys, you’ve collectively had over two years to resolve the grievances that precipitated the last general postal strike in 2007. Issues which, if memory serves, even then had to do with job cuts and modernisation. So WTF have you been doing?

Postal Affairs Minister Pat McFadden is right in saying that ‘a national strike would be completely self-defeating.’ And yet Westminster has been seemingly content to preside over this defeat – to common sense, to workers just wanting to earn a decent buck for a day’s work, to businesses trying to trade their way out of this god-awful recession.

Royal Mail management and the CWU, in my opinion, you both stand guilty of gross acts of inefficiency and ill faith against the British public.
We await their apology