Unions defend €100k pay for 11 weeks’ work

UNIONS at An Post have defended a manager with the company who was paid about €100,000, despite working only a fifth of the year.

The man worked just 11 weeks in 2007 because semi-state companies such as An Post cannot cut staffing levels in their departments without offering alternative employment or voluntary redundancy to those affected.

The man was put into An Post’s “resource centre” in January 2007 and remained there until October 2007.

That centre has been dubbed the “rubber room” because staff were banging their heads on the walls resulting from the fact they had nothing to do.

Following an assessment of his performance in his new role during the last quarter of 2007, a decision was taken to award him a bonus payment of 16% of his €95,000 salary.

As he had only worked in this role for 11 weeks during 2007, the bonus was calculated on a pro-rata basis, based just on the 11 weeks.

The manager did not agree with the amount the company had paid him and argued that An Post should have applied the 16% as a percentage of his salary for the full year.

That meant that, instead of the €3,200 the company gave him, he was entitled to €15,192.

The matter was referred to the Labour Court which found that the manager was entitled to the full company performance bonus despite his assignment to the resource centre.

Sources within An Post claim it is in the same position as other semi-state companies where, unlike the private sector, they simply cannot enforce redundancies on staff when they streamline operations.

They must offer voluntary redundancies and, if those are not accepted, they must find a new role for the staff.

“Often the skills of the employee can be very useful in other sections,” the source said, but added that in other cases there was the necessity to put the staff into the ‘resource centre’.

“When we change a way of working, we have surplus staff. Redundancies are always voluntary. When you are working in that system you are going to have find new ways of relocating staff,” the source said.

Steve Fitzpatrick of the Communications Workers Union blamed previous senior management structures for the impasse which led up to 20 managers being sent to the “rubber room” last year.

He said those managers did nothing wrong and deserved to receive the pay and bonuses to which they were entitled.

He acknowledged the existing senior management were trying their best to find work for those managers who had been uprooted from their original roles.