I wish to allocate a few minutes at the end of my presentation to my colleagues. My presentation will be brief. They have their own issues and between us we represent approximately 10,000 workers in An Post.
I have circulated documentation to members of the committee. We will take a quick look at the true financial position in An Post. We need to try to establish what the real position is, who has been responsible for where An Post finds itself financially and who, if anybody, is being held accountable. We wish to reference the appalling industrial relations record of the current management team. We will conclude with what type of post office organisation we want to have in the future.
We did not arrive at the current situation in An Post by accident. There were a number of contributory factors over the years. We argue that the company continued for almost 12 years without any type of price rise and no business could survive on that basis against a background of 42% inflation. We also host the universal social service that is carried by An Post and, as the monopoly reduces, it is becoming more difficult to cross-subsidise that service. The cost is borne solely by the company.
We need to question the major investment decisions that have been made. It is our information that €0.25 billion has been invested in technology, automation and property over the past number of years. We need to ask if that was sensible and if there is a return on that investment. Attention should also be drawn to the REIMS agreement. It is our information that An Post is only reimbursed for 70% of the cost of delivering other companies' mail. In effect, An Post is subsidising the mail from the rest of the planet.
There is a fairly strict regulatory background. An application for a price rise has been lodged by the company. That price increase is necessary both to keep the company in business and to pay national wage agreements. However, ComReg has cited inefficiencies as the reason for delaying the price increase in circumstances where the company is using the so-called inefficiencies as an excuse to attack workers' pay and conditions.
There is also an endemic overtime situation in An Post. There is an agreement between the unions and the company for taking overtime out of the system but that has not been implemented. The current overtime situation in many parts of the country is being worsened by the recruitment ban imposed by the new management team when it started. That recruitment ban is also severely damaging the quality of service, with many deliveries not being done any more on a daily basis, something that never happened in the company in the past.
When all these factors are brought together, we have a situation where the company finances, depending on which way one views them, are being used as a tool to batter the workers in An Post. Our members have had no pay increase for two years. The basic pay of a post person is €440 per week and many of our members are expected to survive on that amount. Pensioners with 40 years' service can only look forward to a pension of €220 per week. They have been deprived of the cost-of-living increase despite the fact that the board of An Post indicated last October that it would pay it.
With regard to the customer, there has been a reduction in service with the closure of SDS, which leaves many small businesses and customers stranded. There is a reduced quality of service as a result of the recruitment ban. Ultimately, the impact is on the shareholder, the State, and on the economy in the small business sector. The industrial relations regime has been bad public relations for the company and the shareholder. It is in nobody's interest that this state of affairs continue.
Members will see the slide which shows the true financial position. Members will see a slide with the heading, True Financial Position, on which they will see that the price of stamps between 1991 and 2000 went down in real terms. The cost of the pint, newspapers and transport, and the consumer price index, have all climbed alarmingly. The postage stamp has become the poor relation and the postal service is expected to meet that inflation.
The final financial slide relates to SDS, which has been the subject of much debate in the House. However, the bottom line is that the revenue outturn at the end of last year was as the union said it would be at the time. It was €5 million more than forecast in the justification by the company to close SDS — this in circumstances in which the company has done everything to drive parcels out of the market to justify its decision. It has refused to implement a price increase agreed last December by the board in the one area not subject to USO and where it could do so without permission. It has refused to take out the costs identified by its own consultants. It has used the payment of Sustaining Progress increases in its figures in circumstances where it has not paid them. It has abandoned customers almost without notice at the busiest time of the year. The workers in SDS sincerely believe An Post has deliberately sabotaged the parcel business. We consider it a national disgrace.
Another background against which we, as workers, must operate is the appalling industrial relations record. It has been said the post office has always had industrial relations trouble. There was no industrial dispute in An Post for 12 years. In an industry with 10,000 workers, that is an amazing record — that needs to be stated. Since this new management team came in, the relationship with the unions has deteriorated to the worst possible state. It refuses to operate national partnership agreements — it does not want partnership. There is constant need for third-party intervention. We are constantly in the Labour Court or the Labour Relations Commission, LRC. One of the national newspapers recently stated the Labour Court was only short of licking the stamps.
All four unions are in dispute of one form or another with An Post senior management. What is amazing is that all four unions operate across the public service and the private sector. The only area in which they are in constant dispute is An Post and the only common denominator is An Post senior management. It is its management style. It has tried not to recognise us. In the SDS case, it would not deal with us. It dealt directly with individuals and set up phone lines and one-to-one meetings. Despite our members telling senior management to operate through their unions, it refused to do so. In the subsidiary, PostPoint, it has told the unions that it will not give them recognition for negotiation on pay. That is unacceptable. It has no regard for individuals. It opened the exit schemes in SDS on the basis of the cheapest option, despite the SDS agreement being in place and allowing workers to go on the basis of seniority.
Senior management treats retirees with contempt. Recently, there was a case of a man who had retired after 50 years and one day. He received no valedictory letter and no presentation from the company. I went to the director of personnel and asked him if he would remedy this but the man died six months later. He had served for 50 years and one day; he had more service than the entire executive board but received no recognition whatsoever. It is a great example of the way it treats its staff.
Senior management rules by diktat, as evidenced by what is going on in the LRC. After seven months in the LRC, it has not changed one letter. It is its way or the highway. It is never its fault; it is the fault of previous managements or the unions. It is a bad workman who blames his tools. It has no respect for agreements. The SDS agreement has been mentioned but it closed it when the door was closed. There was no debate. There have been two interventions by the national implementation body. We had set up an owner-driver contractor model which is dead in the water. Senior management suspended staff three hours before we went into an LRC hearing. It suspended more during the hearing and suspended others after it.
In regard to the recent national implementation body intervention, we have been sitting in the LRC for the past few days. We have a date of 11 February to resolve the outstanding issues. The day after the NIB intervention, senior management issued the redundancy and exit notices to the staff and the date to which the redundancy notices apply is 11 February, the very day by which we are supposed to resolve everything. Again, it is giving two fingers to the industrial relations machinery of the State, in this case the NIB.
Senior management has broken every agreement we have negotiated in the past few years. In the case of SDS, it was a board decision, which means any agreement we ever make with it in the future can be broken on the basis of a board decision. In the case of Sustaining Progress, it is hard to know on what basis that decision was made but even outside the final terms, senior management has refused to operate what the State has agreed in terms of partnership. It has broken the transformation agreement agreed with all four unions on a number of occasions on the basis of management prerogative. It has even changed the McNeill procedures, the grievance procedures implemented by the Taoiseach. All of these agreements have been breached against a background of a return to work formula last February which indicated no agreements would be breached or rolled back. That dispute last February was described in the Irish Independent as a dispute engineered by An Post senior management. This is a semi-State company engineering industrial disputes in this era of partnership.
All this leads to a complete breakdown of trust. If agreements are broken and trust is shattered, one ends up with protests. We ended up with almost 10,000 people on the streets. People in this country no longer travel from all four corners to march on the streets without good reason. These 10,000 workers in An Post have many reasons to be disillusioned with the company and their pay. The next morning the headlines were "An Post to take staff representatives to court", not An Post asking if it could help or deal with the problems.
How does the committee suggest I go to members in the future to ask them to vote for an agreement with the signature of this management team on the other side? How could I expect staff to buy into this? There is the old saying that if a dog bites you once, it is his fault but if he bites you twice, it is your fault. On this occasion An Post senior management would be biting us for the third or fourth time. Nobody I know is capable of getting postal staff to buy any agreement with the name of this management team on it. It is impossible. As a result, it has, to a large extent, turned itself into lame duck management.
The Oireachtas, the country and customers have a view on the type of postal service they want. We need a debate to decide this once and for all. It is amazing that in the home of capitalism, the United States, the US Postal Service is sacrosanct. The people have spoken and want to keep it. Here, almost through deceit, the post office and its service are being abandoned. We do not believe we can allow the current management to decide the future of the company on its own. We need regulation for the benefit of all stakeholders, the customers, staff and shareholder. Through the Government, we need to develop a strategy which reflects the views of all stakeholders.
In December 2004 the present chief executive wrote to the members and staff stating An Post was a commercial company and must operate like one without a social obligation to rural communities. We know what the chief executive thinks about the type of postal service we should have. Perhaps it is time others had their say because that is not our view, that of our members or any Deputy to whom we have spoken. To get the type of postal service we want, we need a growth strategy. What is amazing is that there are fewer pieces of mail per individual in the countries in Europe with our standard of living. In all other countries improvements in standards of living and growth in population and economy should lead to growth in mail volumes. Instead of trying to grow the business, we are trying to close it.
To a large extent, we are getting out of the parcels area, the biggest growth area in Europe and which will protect jobs into the future. It should be realised that in countries where there is the greatest Internet penetration such as Sweden they have twice as many pieces of mail per individual. Therefore, e-commerce is not replacing mail, despite the lies some will try to tell.
The post office network needs to become the bedrock of rural Ireland. It should be the one-stop shop where one conducts transactions, pays one's fine, gets one's insurance, does one's banking transactions and logs onto the Internet. Do we want to drive people out of provincial Ireland or protect it? To do this, we need fair regulation, regulation which protects daily delivery and universal service and which looks at the issue of subsidy if there is going to be a cost. Subsidy can be achieved in a number of ways, namely by a fund through competition; by restricted areas; or by direct subsidy. The pricing and the stamp should reflect the cost of the business. It should not reflect the type of pay being forced on low-paid postal workers.
What I have outlined can only be delivered through partnership between the workers, the unions, the company and the State. In December, the Minister said,"I also agree with the comments on the necessity to move forward in partnership". Unfortunately, not only does his senior management team not agree with partnership but it has killed it in its infancy in An Post. Semi-State management should be expected to operate all facets of national agreements, not merely those it wishes to operate. It is one thing to not pay people cost-of-living increases but ignoring every other element of national agreements is not acceptable.
The national agreement struck with the four unions should be implemented. We are in a situation where two unions are fully involved with the agreement, my union is only one third of the way involved and the other union is not involved at all. It is an absolute bloody nonsense. People are halfway in and halfway out. Whatever emerges at the end of this process, we need someone in place who will ensure implementation and compliance and who will oversee any type of agreement. I will not — I believe my colleagues will support me in this — sign up to an agreement where the members of management will referee themselves. They have already proved beyond doubt that they cannot do so. Ultimately, we expect both sides to respect the machinery of the State. Anybody who wants to interview representatives of the NIB, the LRC or the Labour Court about their experiences with An Post will be in for a rude awakening.
There can be no An Post service without customers. We want a commitment to a nationwide postal network on which all customers can depend. We want to be the best at what we do, to provide world-class customer service and to operate a customer charter. It is interesting that, when appearing before the committee last year, the chief executive said that he would implement such a charter for the start of this term. There is no sign of it. That is another item of information, among many others, which has not stood up to the test of time. We also want to reverse service cuts, rebuild the personal service, develop new products and for someone to recognise the social responsibility An Post carries in terms of delivering to every household and business five days per week.
It is our view that Ireland needs a professional and properly funded postal service which will be accessible to all citizens. To achieve this we need a fair regulatory environment, professional management and the protection of the universal service obligation. The An Post group of unions demands a fair and equitable approach to industrial relations, wherein agreements will be honoured and staff and their representatives will be treated with dignity and respect. Workers in An Post require proper remuneration for the invaluable service they provide to the public. To achieve this, we require a sea change in the way An Post's senior management conducts its business and also a commitment to partnership, underpinned by the industrial relations machinery of the State.
We welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate about the future of the postal service in this country. I thank the Chairman for inviting us to participate. With his forbearance, I will ask my colleagues to make short contributions in order to illustrate that this is not merely about one union.
