The Royal Mail Strike – Look At The Picture

I am no stranger to strikes. At Chrysler, when the company’s car park was full of unsold cars and management wanted a walk-out (strike) they’d simply instruct me to speed up the production line and within minutes the workers would be heading out the door and making tracks for the nearest pub or betting shop.

Nobody really lost out on these occasions because, the spare cars would be sold and then the factory would have to work overtime to make up stocks. The workers would make more money than they would have (prior to the strike) because they would be paid overtime rates and management would use the down-time (during the strike) to perform critical maintenance on the lines. It was all a bit of a game – everybody knew what was going on so there was no real animosity.

Not so the proposed Royal Mail strike threatened for this week. It won’t really impact me of course but all the discussions on the TV with the union bosses and the mail management is just a throwback to years ago when strikes blighted the UK on a weekly basis. Management want to modernize the Royal Mail systems and the workers are opposed to it because getting machines to do more of the work means fewer employed union members.

I’ll simply say two things about this. When my father-in-law got totally fed up with running a very successful and lucrative shop in Glasgow, primarily because of the stress involved with frequent break-ins and the long hours, he looked around for a job which had absolutely no stress, had no responsibilities attached to it and would allow him loads of free time. After a lengthy period of research he chose his ideal job ….. and got it. A Postman!

Secondly, look at the picture at the start of this blog posting. That’s a betting shop in the background. Those little red buggies are postman’s trolleys. The guy walking past doesn’t look like a postman because his shirt is the wrong colour. All the posties are inside. Says it all really doesn’t it?

PS – the picture from one of the UK nationals wasn’t associated with the Royal Mail, it was actually about William Hill, the bookies.