In Ocean’s Thirteen, the criminal rat-pack led by George Clooney and Brad Pitt, are given the ultimate modern put-down: “You’re analog players in a digital world.” Much the same could be said of the Communication Workers Union, which today will hold another postal strike as it continues to fight the management at Royal Mail.

Who cares? These days, strike action by postal workers is not likely to enrage the public nor generate mass sympathy. If the marketing brochures and the utility bills arrive a couple of days late, who’s going to complain? Indeed, the CWU might inspire a new kind of strike, one that does not inconvenience people but spares them: parking attendants, bailiffs and irrepressibly cheerful Tannoy announcers might all decide to down tools.

The CWU, like so many other unions, is grappling with how to devise industrial action that is effective in the modern world.

Last time there was a national strike, 11 years ago, the postal world was very different. The internet was less well used and Royal Mail was a monopoly. More of our personal communication is done online, using e-mail rather than the Royal Mail. Business cares about the disruption. More large customers are bound to desert Royal Mail, as its reputation gets more battered the longer the dispute goes on.

The CWU makes a change of tactic today, moving from all-out walkouts to targeted action at different operations with the aim of maximising disruption across the network. The danger is that it will be scaled up and still we won’t care about the impact and so will be less inclined to listen to their message.

Royal Mail itself is hardly the model of a modern corporation. Its ownership structure remains undecided. It was forced to pulp 170,000 letters to employees that proposed major changes to the pension scheme midway through a consultation period. And it has yet to publish this year’s financial results, typically due in May.

But the dispute between workers and the Royal Mail underlines the modern challenge for unions.

PCS, the civil service union, which has staged two national strikes this year is now asking members what it should do next. Where unions have been effective recently is in campaigning to raise issues, the most successful being the GMB’s war on private equity. Business may not like the results, but at least the unions have shown they can be an effective lobby group, and not an anachronistic laughing stock.

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