Strikes are damaging to everyone, except the competition. But BA and Royal Mail have to change.

I watched Channel 4 News last night – BA strike – followed by the Panorama about the lamentable state of the Royal Mail. It was enough to remind you of the bad old days of 3 day weeks, when I did my homework by candlelight and the rats ruled London’s streets.

Relations between management and staff need to have got pretty awful within an organisation for the workers to down tools. It’s like a marriage where the rowing has escalated into chucking things, including fists. The company is badly damaged by loss of business and reputation, the staff lose money; the competition is the only winner. Everyone gets angrier and more miserable. There has to be an easier way, you might think. Get in the marriage guidance folk at ACAS.  

What you cannot argue with is that BA and the Royal Mail desperately need to change how they do things, otherwise oblivion beckons. I’d rather travel BA than Ryanair any day, but you simply cannot sustain a contract system which pays a 'cabin services director' £56,325 when the equivalent at Ryanair makes do with two bob and a toffee apple. Beardy Branson only pays his lush Barbie and Kens who shove the trolleys nineteen grand.

BA cabin crew go on about Willie Walsh being confrontational and not shaking their hands when he’s onboard in seat 1A. He may be no charmer and a little deficient in the Emotional Intelligence stakes, but he has a job to do – to ensure his airline survives. And many will not make it out of this downturn. But he clearly hasn’t done the job of winning hearts and minds. And if the strike goes ahead, screwing up the emotion-laden plans of a million Christmas travellers, then everyone in his airline will suffer – staff and management.   

As far as the Royal Mail is concerned, I fear the game is up and in the medium term the organisation is a basket case. Looking at that footage of all those millions of letters whizzing through high-tech sorters, I couldn’t help but wonder why on earth we still bother with paper, stamps, franking machines, and postie gallantly lugging them all down the street when the net does away with such a wasteful process. (Except getting your copy of MT delivered each month, of course.)  

The postman Panorama interviewed was a thoroughly depressed man who’d been pacing the streets for 26 years and looked ready to burst into tears at the prospect of being told to walk at 4mph to increase his efficiency. You felt some sympathy for him. But many Royal Mail people I come across are surly and not very likeable at all. Quite the reverse of charming brand ambassadors who stop for a kindly chat with lonely OAPs, they speed down the 20mph street where I live in their trucks and Transits at 35mph plus, giving you the finger and a mouthful of abuse if you dare to make any comment. At their worst they appear like an unmanageable rabble, whingeing and fiddling while their organisation is levelled by the firestorm of the market.