Dempsey warns of An Post extinction

AN Post will become extinct “very, very quickly” if its workers do not agree to change work practices, Communications Minister Noel Dempsey has warned.

Members of the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU), who make up approximately 8,500 of the 10,500-strong workforce, voted overwhelmingly for industrial action on Friday.

The ballot gave An Post two weeks’ notice, although it did not specify what type of industrial action might take place. It is the latest step in the long-running feud between the two sides.

The CWU wants An Post to pay immediately the full increases due under the national pay agreement, Sustaining Progress. The Labour Court believes the company should pay the increases too, but only after the CWU has agreed to the rationalisation plan. The CWU has rejected this proposal.

Mr Dempsey said the Government was committed to “a strong, vibrant postal service”, but “the only way that that can be achieved is if changes are made within An Post”.

Full liberalisation of the market will take effect in 2009, the minister added, and if the company wasn’t strong enough to withstand competition by then, “it’s just inevitable that An Post is going to go out of business”.

The market has already been partly liberalised, with delivery of post weighing more than 100 grams open to competition.

Mr Dempsey insisted the deal on offer to An Post, which would see a series of basic pay increases in return for changes to archaic overtime arrangements, would leave the workers in an improved position.

“It’d leave them better off, because they’d be sure of their basic pay rather than (depending on) overtime.

“They’d be much better off because they’d be surer of their jobs. I mean, if this continues, the jobs are not going to be there,” he said.

The Government would not be intervening, he said, as it had to “respect the Labour Court”. But he criticised CWU management for failing to put the terms of the Labour Court recommendation to a vote.