Royal Mail - strikes vs costs

[Directional]

So, according to the news the most recent round of postal strikes has cost Royal Mail around £260M... that seems like a collossal amount of lost revenue, even for a business that turns over £9BN annually.

What are the economics of this? surely if RM are faced with costs of this magnitude, would it not make better sense to give greater ground in the pay negotiations, because surely pay rises will not necessarily come close to these sort of costs?

 

[0007]

Re the royal Mail dispute

What i'd like to know in addition to the "costs" of the recent dispute, is what the settlement terms are? It all seems to have gone very quiet on both sides so presumably the management have caved in.

An example of what the future is: just had some books delivered from a very specialised academic bookseller that does a lot of business. They informed me that delivery was by Parcelforce but I was surprised to receive by private courier. Turns out he was on contract to PF due to recent dispute (I know that was royal mail but presumably there's a connection). The delivery guy was smiling all over his face and commented "perhaps they don't want a job!" - How long can the Government postal service survive in its present form when the privates are breathing down their necks?

I also note on TV, many ads to encourage use of the local Post Office and how good and convenient it is - this is at the same time we see published almost daily, list of closures etc etc. Only a government organisation could act like this. The sooner it's privatised the better IMHO.