Strikeout: US vs. UK postal service

US Postal Service

In a time of record lay-offs and unprecedented levels of unemployment, the management of employees' working conditions have never seemed more critical.

In the US, the situation is paramount. For the private sector, where the last few months have seen employers freeze salaries, cancel bonuses and institute longer work days, America's employees have slowly come to accept that cost-saving measures are now a part of working life.

Meanwhile, across the US public sector, the outlook for workers seems - for want of a better word - increasingly more "European."

In France, for instance, riots and plant takeovers have become regular news, and for the US public sector the mood isn't that dissimilar. Back in May, when the budget deficit in New Jersey hovered around the $3.3 billion mark, angry state workers demonstrated in Trenton and took Governor Jon Corzine to court over his plan to require unpaid furloughs for public employees.

But then, its not just the US public sector currently fighting against the tide over workforce management. In the UK, the Royal Mail postal service has exploded onto the global news scene with reports that workers have now voted to take strike action over job security and working conditions.

Postal workers have overwhelmingly voted in favour of action, with 61,623 out of a total 80,830 workers who voted saying they wanted to strike.

According to reports from the BBC, the Royal Mail and union, the Communication Workers Union (CWU), have been unable to resolve differences on how best to modernise the postal service.

However, the CWU, which includes workers in both the telephone, cable and DSL industries, as well as the postal services and boasts 240,000 members, pales in comparison to membership figures of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and its 333,000 members: which in turns raises significant questions relating to how the US would deal with a strike of its own US Postal Service (USPS).

Take, for instance, the fact that the UK postal service currently delivers 75 million pieces of mail each day - a figure that has been considerably disrupted by ongoing, wildcat strikes already. Compare that to the US's significantly larger 555 million pieces of mail delivered each day, and you begin to get a handle of the scale of what the US would have to deal with.

The literal size of the issue doesn't detract from the importance of the UK's postal service, however; and Dave Ward, deputy general secretary of the CWU, has already said his union would work hard to avoid a strike.

According to Ward, the CWU would give the Royal Mail a "final opportunity to resolve the dispute over the next 10 days."

He added: "Union members have delivered a damning verdict on the way the Royal Mail is run. We understand the need for modernisation, but it needs to be done in a way that protects workers".

And therein lies the nub of the issue for postal services on either side of the Atlantic. The APWU was, after all, formed following the US postal strike of 1970, a groundbreaking two-week event which lead then-president Richard Nixon to call out the US armed forces and the National Guard, in an attempt to distribute the mail and break the strike.

The facts speak for themselves, not least in the US: employing 656,000 workers and 260,000 vehicles, The USPS is the second-largest civilian employer in America. It is also the operator of the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world.

And, according to the USPS's own declaration, it is obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality.

As such, if any organization has an obligation to protect its workers, it is the USPS. And, by association, perhaps the same applys to the UK's Royal Mail.

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