A further 41 An Post staff were suspended this morning as the industrial relations row within the company deepened.
The company's senior manager, Mr Owen Morgan, warned this morning the dispute with the Communications Workers' Union is expected to worsen.
The union said today it would be willing to hold conciliatory talks with An Post management. However, the company has already ruled out holding meetings at the Labour Relations Commission.
The dispute centres around the union's claims that An Post has failed to live up to the terms of the Transformation Through Partnership deal of 2000 and that it has not established the employee shared-ownership plan that was contained in the agreement.
The CWU is also angered at the introduction of new working practices, which it claims were imposed on them without consultation. The union decided to defer a decision on all-out strike action last Friday.
An Post says the dispute is unjustified and it rejects the CWU's "cynical" ploy to hinge the row on the new arrangements. It also says union members had been told to halt other duties unrelated to the new arrangements. The company said this was "unacceptable" and it had no alternative but to suspend the workers.
The suspension of 32 sorting office workers and nine delivery van drivers this morning brings the total number of staff off the payroll to 304. Some 262 staff stationed at the Dublin Mail Centre in Clondalkin, which processes almost two-thirds of the country's mail, were suspended at the weekend.
An Post is running advertisements in a number of newspapers this morning asking the public not to post mail to or from a number of regions "until further notice".
The dispute is affecting a number of sorting offices in Dublin city and county, and counties Wicklow, Louth, Monaghan, Kildare and Meath. A separate dispute in Galway is also seriously disrupting deliveries, while delays to the Mitchelstown postal service are also reported.
All international inbound and outbound mail is also affected, but An Post offices remain open for all other business.
The CWU executive met this morning to discuss the dispute. Union members have already voted by a six-to-one margin in favour of taking strike action.
The Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern, said the dispute could be resolved using the State's industrial relations mechanisms, such as the Labour Court. He said the country, the workforce and the country would be damaged by the dispute. "With goodwill and a willingness to work together the issues can be addressed successfully," he said.
The Irish Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (ISME) association warned today that an all-out strike could cost small businesses up to €10 million per day. The association called on An Post and the CWU "to immediately engage in meaningful negotiations". Dublin Chamber of Commerce has also warned the dispute could force small businesses in the capital to close.
Fine Gael's communication spokesman, Mr Simon Coveney, also urged both sides to hold urgent talks. He said the "real losers" in the dispute will be the public and businesses.
The Labour Party's Mr Tommy Broughan blamed the conflict on "bungled management at An Post" and the deteriorating state of industrial relations across the semi-state sector. He called on Mr Ahern to intervene or to appoint a mutually acceptable mediator to resolve the dispute.
The Progressive Democrats communications spokesman, Senator Tom Morrissey, also called for negotiations to resume as soon as possible. "Partnership must be about negotiation, and not about adopting a hard-line position while eyeballing one's opponent," he said. "Nobody benefits from that kind of approach."
Thousands of An Post staff were told in January that the company - which lost over €46 million last year - could not afford the pay rises due under the Sustaining Progress national agreement. The company, which had forecast losses of over €30 million for this year, may have to make 1,350 staff redundant over the next few years to cut costs.
The Department of Social and Family Affairs said this afternoon it had set up cheque collection centres at Social Welfare Local Offices in areas affected by the dispute. All Social Welfare cheques, including Supplementary Welfare Allowance cheques, can be collected at these centres. Recipients are advised to attend the appropriate centre on the day following their normal payment day.
Around 180,000 of the 1.6 million social welfare payments each week are in the form of cheques posted to recipients.
