Another cost business can do without

Oct 21 2009 By Andrew Hebden, The Jouranl

FOR thousands of small businesses, tomorrow's postal strike could hardly have come at a worse time.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute, the fact that the management has allowed the likelihood of a national strike to materialise is a huge failure on its part. Modernisation is essential if the Royal Mail is to survive, but tackling industrial relations in the way they have seems anything but modern.

Lord Digby Jones apparently reckons that a strike would be good for small firms in the long run as it will precipitate serious changes in the ‘final mile’ arrangements that we are used to at present. He also argues that businesses will be forced to explore online opportunities as an alternative to the Royal Mail. This may well be the case, and fewer and fewer people can have much sympathy for the Royal Mail, which it is increasingly difficult to see as anything other than an anachronistic organisation that doesn’t merit being propped up any longer.

Despite this, for most small firms, the added cost and inconvenience caused by this strike could prove a near-fatal blow in such testing economic conditions and, for that reason alone, government intervention is surely necessary to ensure that damage is limited.

Business can ill afford this strike – as much as it can ill afford to rely on the Royal Mail for much longer.

Andrew Hebden - The Voice of nebusiness