Royal Mail will lose customers if strike goes ahead

The postal service is not as important as it used to be to businesses, as many things are sent by email, and many physical items are already sent by courier.

Nevertheless, the threatened strikes by postal workers will come as a pain to British businesses, and many more are likely to abandon the Royal Mail, not just for the duration of the strike, but permanently.

A survey carried out by the British Chambers of Commerce and Sky News discovered that 75 per cent of British businesses will look for a more viable postal service if the strike threatened by the Communication Workers Union (CWU) goes ahead.

Businesses feel they are being held to ransom and that the national strike will hit the economic recovery and harm trading as Christmas approaches.

The union is encouraging its members to strike in a dispute about working conditions. The CWU claims that the management has broken the terms of its 2007 agreement about modernising Royal Mail. It also has concerns about funding the Royal Mail pension scheme in the future.

The future may turn out to be a whole lot bleaker if customers move elsewhere and don't come back.