An Post's new delivery regime
It's a farce!

---

Eamonn McNally, Chairperson Dublin Postal Delivery Branch (Personal capacity)

It is hard for members of my union branch to fathom that at a time of massive growth in population in the Dublin area, that management from the upper echelons of the GPO are enforcing cuts in delivery routes and duties.

Every district office has seen major new housing developments and growth, for example Balbriggan has had a population growth of 114% in the last four years. It is sheer lunacy for the collection and delivery project team to propose cuts at this time.

An Post made profits last year of €15 million with a 4% increase in the volume of mail delivered. The volume of international packages increased by 14%.

Large parts of north Dublin, in particular working class communities, are often left without mail for days because of a shortage of delivery staff. Yet at the same time there is a policy of collapsing duties. This basically means that management are enforcing flexible duties on workers to prioritise delivery to businesses and areas that are financially more lucrative for the company at the expense of deliveries to the regular routes.

Postal workers are being forced to work on Saturdays to deliver mail that should have been delivered during the week. It has been reported that a postman in Galway went on holidays for two weeks and when he came back the mail for his route was waiting for him to deliver it! That’s how badly understaffed An Post is and the problem has been compounded by the new collection and delivery regime.

An Post spokesperson was quoted in a Sunday newspaper as saying that the new postal routes could not be too long because they had been redesigned using state of the art logistical planning technology! The first area to go "live" under the new collection and delivery regime is Dublin 10 – Ballyfermot. The postal workers in this area will tell you that the new system and routes are a farce. The District Office is based in the Westlink Industrial Estate. Many of the postal workers are rostered to start work at 9.30 am and are lucky to get their mail to deliver it by 11.30 am!

Management are in a dilemma because their great plan is failing. The collection and delivery regime should be scrapped and a new plan must be renegotiated. However this time local branches must be fully involved in these talks to ensure there isn’t a repetition of the failings of the current deal and also that wages and conditions are fully protected.

The people best placed to decide how an efficient and effective collection and delivery system can work are the postal workers who have to implement it and who have been doing this work for many years. A 4% payment due from January 2007 has still not been paid because management are claiming that cost saving criteria have not been met. But even this 4% increase is not enough. This payment is not incorporated into a postal workers’ basic pay but instead is an allowance. Allowances can be withdrawn! Pay is a major issue for postal workers. The basic wage of €513 a week is over €6,000 a year less than the average industrial wage. The Towards 2016 pay increases have already been wiped out by the inflation rate of 5.2%.

The current economic boom presents a golden opportunity for the union to sort out the problems with the collection and delivery system. But also to fulfil a motion passed at our last annual conference which calls for the union leaders to take all necessary steps including industrial action to get the basic wage of a postal worker raised to the average industrial wage.

An Post
500 sub post offices under threat

---

Susan Fitzgerald

The announcement that up to 500 local post offices could be closed caused anger and concern amongst postal workers and the public alike. The report stated that "An Post is finalising a deal with the Irish Postmasters' Union to begin the process of shutting down offices".

At the time, John Kane, General Secretary of the Irish Postmasters’ Union was quoted as having said "the overall business loss could be as high as 80 per cent or more and while the figure of 500 closures mentioned in the national media may not be immediate, unless something is done it could reach this number over the next five years."

The Socialist spoke to John Kane and while he felt that the figure of 500 closures was not accurate, he said that "what could happen is that by default more offices will close because the post maters and mistress’s running them are incredibly badly paid". He went on to say, "our members generate 72% of all the money for An Post’s non mail income but receive only 27% of that income".

There are currently 1,300 post offices in the country, in 2000 there were 1,800. An Post do not want to pay for smaller post offices and talk about viability and profitability.  Hundreds of smaller post offices will never be economically viable but they continue to provide an essential social service. Post office closures hit the entire community, but in particular have a bad affect on the elderly and those without transport.

In Corduff Dublin 15, some older residents were left for weeks without their pensions when the local post office closed down last August. They did not know where their details were transferred to, many now have to rely on relatives to drive them to another post office due to the loss of the local one. The local post office plays an essential role in many regional towns, villages and rural parts of the country. It is not an exaggeration to say that in many areas the post office is the heart of the local community.

An Post receives no subsidy from the government yet it provides an essential social service. This situation cannot continue and the government must provide an annual subvention to stop any further closures and where post offices have recently closed they must be re-opened.