In 1978 Australia Post announced the Mail Networks Plan, which would effectively decentralise the mail exchange into metropolitan and country regional centers. The grand experiment in automation and electronic mechanisation had failed. An Australia Post manager is quoted in a 1979 Bulletin article saying 

“They come to work to face a waterfall of mail and at the end of the day they can’t see any result for their effort. They have nothing to look forward to except their take-home pay.”    

With 3,000 employees under one roof, the plan to decentralise had an enormous impact. By July 1979 a combination of union bans, strikes, and stood down workforces saw between 15-30 million mail articles unprocessed and undelivered.  

In 1982 Redfern Mail Exchange was decommissioned, and the mail sorting system decentralised. For two decades the site was a place of radical and significant technological developments, and of hugely influential industrial relations events. 

Postcodes are a four digit number, but they represent so much more. The introduction of postcodes was one of the sparking points for the legislation of worker’s and women’s rights, the equal pay act, union and protected industrial action, and the role of automation in the workplace.