Postal workers 'facing Royal Mail takeover'

AN POST will cease to exist and the Royal Mail will be handling all Irish postal services within a few years, if the current difficulties are not resolved, Communications Minister Noel Dempsey said yesterday.

Speaking as up to 8,000 postal workers brought their grievances to the steps of Dáil Éireann yesterday, Mr Dempsey said the only option was for both sides to agree to negotiations.

"I don't particularly want to see the Royal Mail delivering the postal service in Ireland in 2009 but that's what we're looking at unless people sit down around the table.

"They have grievances but what they need to do is air their grievances in the proper place. I think disrupting the mail service for customers is not the way forward in this," the minister said.

However, Communications Worker's Union (CWU) leaders at yesterday's march rejected any suggestion of Labour Relations Commission discussions saying any previous agreements had been broken by management.

"These people are dishonourable and they cannot be trusted and why would we go through a process we have already been through before," CWU general secretary Steve Fitzpatrick told yesterday's protesters.

The CWU executive will meet today to consider their next move. However further large-scale industrial action before Christmas is considered unlikely.

A spokesman for An Post said nothing had been gained by yesterday's stoppage and indicated that postal services would not return to normal until at least the weekend. An estimated 30,000 social welfare payments have been delayed by the action.

Although An Post workers have numerous grievances, yesterday's strike was in protest at the continued failure of An Post to pay a 5% Sustaining Progress pay rise due to workers and pensioners.

Mr Dempsey said the company could not afford to pay the wage increases since it was already looking at a loss of between €2 million and €9m this year. "If sustaining progress was paid to them that loss could be €20m to €27m so that's where the dilemma is," he said.

Mr Dempsey also suggested there may be some room for manoeuvre in relation to pension increases due and said he had spoken to Finance Minister Brian Cowen about it.

"If we can advance that, I'd like to advance that. I don't think the pensioners should suffer in these circumstances. We may be able to advance it on the basis that the union would not regard it as a precedent, that it would not necessarily be linked to pay increases," he said.

However, union sources immediately responded by saying they had informed the company and the Government more than a month ago that they were willing to separate the two issues if pensioners could be paid what they were owed.

An Post sources rejected that claim saying the union had always been against such a move.

Meanwhile, both sides are to be summoned before the Oireachtas Communications Committee in the new year to explain the current state of the company. Committee chairman Noel O'Flynn said he would ask management and unions to appear before the committee early in January to explain the current state of the postal system in Ireland.