It's a good question but can you please look closely at my replies so far. Unusually for me, you may notice that I have NOT commented on the validity of the strike! Doesn't that strike (tee hee!) you as odd..... from someone who is broadly hard-right-wing-Conservative?
That is becasue I WANT the Post Office to do what it has ALWAYS done! I do NOT want to privatise the post office as the majority of what you offer as a 'company' is better and FAIRER than the alternatives. The Post Office not only delivers letters but it also delivers SERVICE to the community. For me, I still want to keep the BBC as a licence fee service and NOT a privatised industry...for EXACTLY the same reasons... the 'extra' that they give to this country is WORTH the lack of free-market because it offers MORE than we PAY for it!
However, that does NOT extend to:-
1) The workforce of the PO being able to prevent reasonable modernisation as though they have a god-given-right to retain jobs at my exccess expense, either by extra taxes or over charging.
2) Your union attempting to return to 1970s policies of 'STRIKE'. Firstly, because even YOU can't tell us WHY you are striking! If you ask 5 postmen WHY they are on strike, you'll get SIX different answers! The REAL reason is that you have seen-off privatisation and your union now wants to flex it's muscles by breaking agreements you made at the LAST round of negotiations.
I suppose my 'core view' is that, while I feel your industry DESERVES special treatment (keeping it's monopoly), you should NOT be allowed to SCREW us with an unfair strike! I am not far from the view that YOU, like the Police, Security services, our armed forces, etc., should NOT have the power of 'strike'! And I'd alos remove it from the Railwaymen and the Underground staff for the SAME reasons!
Personally, I'd put ALL those groups on 'pendulum arbitration' and THAT would ELIMINATE this and all the OTHER problems!
For those who don't know what it is, see this article:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum_arbitration
It's a SUPERB system so long as it's BINDING ON ALL PARTIES!
Ian
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