Stop the Royal Mail strike posthaste

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... trike-post" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This action must be called off if the postal service's future is to be preserved. The government must stop pontificating and act

What on earth is the government doing? And in particular, what does Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, think he is paid by us to do?

It looks as though the Communications Workers Union will give the legally required seven days' notice of a national mail strike. We know already how much chaos and economic pain the stoppages – which have been occurring regularly since the beginning of August – are causing. We know that other private businesses are stepping in to offer reliable services to replace Royal Mail. This could break our 300-year-old national mail service and further smash the Post Office network, where a third of sub-postmasters and mistresses have already seen their income decline.

Royal Mail is owned by us. But our representatives in government are standing by like elderly gents in the snug, using words like "suicidal" (Mandelson) and "unnecessary" (Gordon Brown) and muttering that they hope this strike can be avoided.

But it can't be avoided without outside mediation. The trust between the Royal Mail management and their workers, and the workers' union the CWU, seems to have gone. The strike is evidence of that, suicidal though it clearly is. The stories from postal workers about bullying, harassment and crude service-cutting are too widespread to be ignored by a responsible government – which is, after all, sole shareholder in Royal Mail.

The answer is not beer and sandwiches at No 10, dusting down that old manual of industrial bargaining, looking for a quick fix that will stop this strike. The strike has to be called off if Royal Mail is to have the future it could have as a great communications industry and service for all the people. The evidence is that we overwhelmingly want this. The universal service obligation – covering the country from Lerwick to Lands End – is a service and a symbol that no private company will ever match.

But left to themselves the union and management can't deliver this. The government needs to find the way to paint the future that the British people want for the last of the great public services not to be sold off, one that includes a commitment to keeping Royal Mail public, strengthening the Post Office network, turning the workforce's commitment and the British people's reliance on Royal Mail into something like a mutualised structure of ownership, or turning Royal Mail into a trust in perpetuity. And Royal Mail is an intensely localised service – local economies rely on it heavily. Small businesses need it. The prime minister promised to build up the Post Office's financial services and put Post Offices at the heart of communities. Here's a golden opportunity for him to make it happen – at the moment he's going a funny way about it.

The government failed in its attempt to part-privatise Royal Mail. The disruption and distrust caused by that in part contributed to the desperation of management to modernise the system and the despair of workers who are feeling the thud of sometimes crude efficiency-seeking. The government should learn from that and turn to new and more publicly focused solutions to the current problems. Royal Mail needs to be modernised –the government could make that modernisation include the needs of communities, of local economies, of new forms of stakeholding in the organisation, making better use of an incredibly loyal and often highly skilled workforce, imaginative future developments (Post Bank anyone?) covering local information hubs, linked deliveries and a range of different collection and delivery arrangements.

We could call it leadership. Royal Mail is a powerful part of British life. Its time the government lived up to its name and did a bit of proper governing to protect it.

[borders]

what a good article, at least some MPs feel the same way- geraldine smith for one , its just a shame the people at the top table dont. FFS get a grip - Labour, everybody wants a good public mail service.

[jim1911]

Who thinks that our competitors will deliver rural mail

[piranha]

Who thinks that our competitors will deliver rural mail

FFS I live in greater london and one of our 'competitiors' can't even find my house, never mind out in the sticks, they tried to find the place on three seperate occasions and have now returned it to sender, useless idiots. I just sent them a complaint saying how the postman manages to find it every day, what's wrong with them?! BTW it was interlink express

[yorksaint]

It boils down to one question: Is the Royal Mail's future as a public service or a private business? It cannot be both, like a sober caring Dr. Jekyll one minute - then with ever increasing doses of Mandelson's privatisation medicine become an ugly monster with no morals or social responsibility. Maybe not the best metaphor to use...

[trythat]

Good peice fro a newspaper, I agree that the government should get involved, and it was nice to see that someone actually believes what the humble postman says. It made me feel better at least.