An Post agrees to reinstate all workers

An Post has agreed to reinstate the 91 temporary workers who it claimed were not covered by LRC proposals aimed at kick-starting talks on the postal dispute.

The Labour Relations Commission’s proposals required An Post to reinstate all the workers it had suspended in the past two weeks because of the dispute.

The company and the Communications Workers Union accepted the proposals yesterday, but An Post subsequently refused to rehire the 91 contractors, claiming they were not covered by the LRC recommendations.

The company said the staff were let go because of a lack of work and not because they were refusing to comply with new sorting arrangements.

This afternoon, however, An Post agreed to reinstate them.

It also said it was planning to hire 200 new casual staff in the next few days to deal with the mail backlog caused by the suspension of more than 600 workers in the past fortnight.