An Post staff to pay price but bosses net €800,000

THE board of directors of An Post received almost €800,000 in fees and bonuses last year.

The generous remuneration packages for the top executives was last night criticised by unions in light of the revelation that the company may lose €50m this year and will press to shed 1,500 jobs.

According to its latest annual report, An Post's 14-member board of directors shared a salary package worth €773,000, including bonuses and additional benefits last year.

The largest salary of recently retired chief executive John Hynes who left his post in July amounted to €343,000, including a performance-related bonus of €27,000 cleared by the Department of Communications.

By contrast, the basic salary of An Post workers, whose jobs are being threatened, amounts to €354.12 a week (or €18,414 per annum) for a postman, while a retail clerk in a post office receives €338.82 a week.

Mr Hynes, who brought An Post from a loss of €10m in 1990 to a profit of €35m in 2000, predicted this summer that losses for 2003 would amount to €15m.

Mr Hynes was unavailable for comment last night.

Criticising the failure of management to accurately gauge the perilous state of the company, the Communications Worker's Union (CWU) said staff should not be punished for a problem created by management.

"The real concern here is that the staff should not be used as scapegoats. We are not going to allow the staff to be the management's fall guy when we have a situation which was brought about by successive Government ministers and the ineptitude of the previous management," said CWU head of regulatory affairs and employment law Michael Bride.

Repeating his call for An Post management to be quizzed by the Oireachtas Communications Committee, Fine Gael communications spokesman Simon Coveney said high salaries had to be matched by top-level results.

Reacting to criticism of last year's €27,000 bonus payment to Mr Hynes, a spokesman for Communications Minister Dermot Ahern said the department did not engage in the micro-management of semi-State companies.

"If the board of a company recommend a bonus payment there is no reason why we would stand in its way," he said.

While An Post blamed the mounting losses on a delay in the Government's sanction of a stamp price increase, Government sources said management should not have based their profit forecasts on an increase which had not yet been granted.