The prospect of a further dispute between An Post and the Communications Workers' Union was raised yesterday at the union's biennial conference in Galway.
The two sides are currently in talks at the Labour Relations Commission following the recent dispute, which severely disrupted postal services in Dublin and other areas in the country.
It is now considered highly unlikely, however, that agreement can be reached by the mid-May deadline set by the LRC in a proposed agenda for talks accepted by the two sides earlier this month.
Mr Con Scanlon, the CWU general secretary, told conference delegates that the approach taken by the company at the talks "would not leave you confident that we would cut a deal in the timeframe set out in the LRC settlement, or anything like it".
He claimed the union was committed to reaching a settlement as quickly as possible, but An Post had to decide if the talks were "for real" or were "a ritual dance before the next bout of attrition".
"Should they choose the route of further confrontation, we will be ready for that," he said. "In any battle for the hearts and minds of the postal worker, the union will win every time and no force on earth will divide us when the chips are down."
Also addressing the conference, Mr David Begg, general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, accused An Post of using the 550 workers suspended during the dispute "almost as a weapon of mass destruction". He claimed there was a danger that, having failed in its objectives the first time around, the company might try to re-start the dispute. That would not be acceptable to the ICTU and he did not think it would be acceptable to the Government either.
Mr Begg was general secretary of the CWU in the late 1980s when negotiations took place on the formation of the Employee Share Ownership Plan, which gives staff a stake in the company prior to its privatisation.
He said the Eircom ESOP, however, had been predicated on the Government remaining involved in the company as a major shareholder. Its subsequent decision to privatise the company entirely had been a policy failure.
