Strikers return to work, but how much has the strike contributed to the decline of the postal service?

The illegal strike by Royal Mail workers in Belfast is due to end as the company promises to allow a third party to look at relations between management and employees.

As pointed out by Parnell in response to Mr Levee's Sister-In-Law, the postal workers have really shot themselves in the foot over this one. The 2 week strike will have forced businesses, hospitals etc to rethink how they communicate with their customers (or patients) in the future.

Follow up:

During the strike, which saw the suspension of the Special Delivery service in Northern Ireland, many patients missed hospital appointments after not receiving their reminder letters. People had problems paying bills and students who had ordered text books over the internet for the new term now find themselves into their 4th week (of 12) with no books!

The strike was illegal in the first instance because no ballot was held. The main unions involved had called for the strikers to go back to work, saying "decent people are losing pay for very spurious reasons" and that the strike "has become deeply sinister". and the striker's colleagues in Londonderry refused to support them.

Anyway, as we speak, any manager worth his salt will be thinking about methods to avoid being stung by any recurrence of such a strike, and this will only contribute to the growing number of communications being made through email, text message and other media that take advantage of modern technology to cut out the postal service altogether. Letters will be replaced by emails and/or phone calls, companies will increasingly encourage customers into paying bills by direct debit instead of cheque and important deliveries will be handed to reliable couriers.

There was mention on BBC Newsline of strikers not getting paid for the last two weeks, well if this trend continues the way I think it will, some of them might have to get used to that circumstance - safe in the knowledge they've helped contribute to it themselves.