Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

The failure of An Post management to fulfil one of the key objectives it was mandated with, to successfully manage change and renewal at the company in the context of market deregulation and liberalisation, has been a hallmark of its performance in recent years. The management style has been by diktat rather than by facilitating a transformation in a climate of consultation, co-operation and harmony with the workforce. The results of the failure of An Post management are an indictment of the paucity of its style of management in recent years.

Industrial relations at the company are at an all time low; they are now at a poisonous level. Workers' deep concerns about the deterioration of the postal service have not been taken on board by management. Management has long implemented a ban on recruitment of new staff members, whether in a temporary or permanent capacity, and this has had a serious effect on the universal service obligation, as was the case in the summer. Many districts around the country have not been receiving their due post on a daily basis, rather there is a delay of ten or 15 days. An incredible situation has been allowed to develop. The Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, may think that people easily agree to go out on strike but I assure him that is not the case. Over 90% of a workforce voting 90% in favour of strike action illustrates serious disharmony at the company.

Postal workers and their families have been in contact with my office to alert me to the dire circumstances that often exist in families due to the current pay and conditions at An Post, and that is not including what is being withheld from staff.

Since November 2003, An Post workers and pensioners have been denied the 8% cost of living increase to which they were entitled under Sustaining Progress partnership agreement, which all Members of this House received. Postal employees have been extremely tolerant in enduring this wage freeze for so long when all other groups covered by the Sustaining Progress agreement have received their increases.

An Post made a €7 million profit last year on the basis of a number of years of serious decline. It has built up a considerable war chest from the sale of a number of overseas companies. As the Irish Congress of Trade Unions conference held in Belfast was told, the burden of resolving the difficulties at An Post cannot be exclusively borne by An Post staff, but that seems to have been the case. The staff have been denied their Sustaining Progress increases while at the same time the management received significant bonus payments such as the €12,000 Christmas pay-out last year and the €50,000 received by the part-time chairperson, Ms Margaret McGinley.

If greater efficiencies, productivity and cost-cutting measures are being demanded of the workforce, why is the same not being expected of management, given that it has managed the company so badly?

One of the most outrageous aspects of this whole saga has been that An Post pensioners have been left for so long without receiving their agreed increases. I was informed today that 78 An Post pensioners have passed away in the interim period without ever receiving the increases they were guaranteed under Sustaining Progress. That is an astonishing figure and it a shocking indictment of the way industrial relations have deteriorated at the company.

The Minister has been extensively quoted in the media during the last week and at the Fianna Fáil ard fheis as rubbishing the concerns of postal workers and implying that they are a highly paid and over-indulged group of employees in this State, but the opposite is the case. He referred to a postman who is working for just three and a half hours a day yet being paid for seven and a half hours. The Minister has, as yet, been unable to produce any evidence that this postman, with a seemingly Stakhanovite productivity rate, actually exists.

At such a critical juncture in this dispute it would be outrageous if it were to emerge that the Minister has been acting as a mouthpiece for An Post management, with not a shred of evidence to back up his claim. We have subsequently heard from An Post workers that the new delivery arrangements will result in a significant deterioration in the service to the public. For example, no weekend collections would take place and none would be scheduled after 6 p.m.

For all these reasons postal workers are, correctly, concerned about the effect of current collection and delivery proposals on take home pay and conditions. Given that the universal postal service has been on the verge of collapse under the current management in what is classically a people business, it is clear management has signally failed to manage the company or the change and transformation processes which, as we are all aware, are necessary in this era of deregulation and electronic substitution.

The Minister must give a lead and try to ensure the looming action, which is set to take place at midnight on Thursday, does not take place. I urge the Minister of State to indicate to the House the way forward and how the matter can be resolved.

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