News that Adam Crozier, Royal Mail chief executive, is set to receive a bumper bonus will exasperate postal workers. Industrial relations at the Royal Mail are already antagonistic and in any event a 2.5 per cent basic pay offer looks unexciting. The total package for Mr Crozier, comprising cash of up to £370,000 and other benefits, could approach or even exceed £1 million. In that context, 2.5 per cent looks less appetising still.

Union leaders are already confident that strike action proposals, on which employees have until Thursday to vote, will be supported. Although the opinion poll evidence underpinning the confidence has to be taken with a pinch of salt, there is a significant risk that deliveries of mail will be disrupted. Yet it would be foolish, to say the least, for postal workers to pursue industrial action. If they seek confrontation in a fit of pique at bonus payments made to Mr Crozier, they will fall a long way short of a sensible decision.

Organisations such as Royal Mail find it difficult to attract credible managers. If the uphill struggles come without tasty compensation, our postal service would find itself bereft of adequate leadership. At the same time service standards have improved in recent months and, since Mr Crozier’s pay is related to sharper performance, it is only right he should be rewarded. Yes, it is individual postmen and women that are collecting, sorting and delivering letters and parcels in more timely fashion. And yes, Mr Crozier must prove he is solving problems creatively rather than meeting middling targets with mediocrity. But posties need direction, and productivity is primed by well motivated directors.

Postal workers should look to their own fortunes, not those of their chief executive, when deciding whether to stage a walkout. In the context of the competitive threats facing Royal Mail, a three or four hundred thousand pound bonus is neither here nor there. Much more pertinent is the fact that the post must be competitively priced if Royal Mail is to have any hope of sustaining an existence on the current scale.

Posties will price themselves out of jobs if they decide to settle only for bigger pay packets. In the name of competitiveness, posties must also embrace mechanisation. This will lead, unfortunately, to job cuts. But more jobs will be lost if the Royal Mail fails to offers customers the efficiency and value for money brought by automation. Meanwhile, pension payments to past and present postal workers can only be guaranteed by Royal Mail if it enjoys economic viability.

Customers do not lack choice. E-mail and text messages are rapidly replacing letters as the preferred medium for written personal communication. Royal Mail no longer enjoys a monopoly over trunking mail up and down the country and it may only be a matter of time before daily house-to-house delivery services are opened to rivals. Junk mail, disliked by householders but loved by Royal Mail because of the revenue it brings, also may be suppressed as enthusiasm for waste-watching grows. Rather than going to the trouble of recycling, few consumers would complain if mailshots were not sent in the first place.

Mr Crozier will deserve his bonuses more if he persuades his employees to appreciate these harsh realities and to implement the necessary restorative measures. But postmen and women will suffer most if they refuse to be persuaded.