Rachel Holdsworth

Postal Strikes Go Official

Looks like the entire country's set to experience what we've been suffering in London all summer: postal workers have voted 3:1 in favour of a national strike. Such a majority kind of puts a hole in Royal Mail's insistence that the problems were because of just a few trouble spots (like Mount Pleasant, where the first strikes happened in May). There aren't any dates yet but we think we can comfortably assume Christmas will be buggered.

Although we're all (justifiably) hacked off with our lack of post, and post workers seem to be hastening their own demise as companies switch to other services seemingly every day, we were fascinated to read an article in the LRB by an actual postie. It's a view from the sorting office floor and gives us a peek at just what the dispute is about, rather than Royal Mail and CWU dancing around each other with talk of "restructuring". One striking (ha) thing is this figure of '10% down' because of the internet that gets bandied about everywhere. However, even though the amount of letters are falling, the internet also means more packages, some carried round the country by other companies but relying on Royal Mail - and the postie's sack - for the final mile to our doors. It's worth a read, and it's not like you've got that box set from Amazon to distract you, is it? (Image by DaveWilliams from the Londonist Flickr pool)