An Post staff holding the country to ransom AGAIN

Dragging the thread back on topic, looks like the strike is happening from midnight Sunday:
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You can air your grievances here:
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The CWU are in the wrong about this, because they are punishing innocent citizens. They are threatening the jobs of hard working people, working for companies that rely on An Post.
 
umop3p!sdn said:
They are threatening the jobs of hard working people, working for companies that rely on An Post.
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What kinds of companies will have their jobs put under threat as a result of the strike?
 
"What kinds of companies will have their jobs put under threat as a result of the strike?"

1. Mail order companies - total loss of revenue for duration of strike.

2. Direct mail advertising companies - total loss of revenue for duration of strike.

In the case of the above companies, it would be fair to attribute their losses wholly to the strike.

Many other companies will face losses, and a financially weak company might go under, but in such cases, the postal strike is more by way of being the "straw that broke the camels back".

Anybody got any other examples?
 
Hi MOB - I can't imagine there will be too many tears shed for the direct mail advertising companies. In fact, less junk mail may be seen a positive outcome of the strike by many, I suspect.

In relation to mail order companies, are there many Irish mail order companies which rely largely on the An Post service? I'd have thought that many mail order companies would now be using private couriers to ship their products - No?
 
MOB said:
Anybody got any other examples?
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I think quite a few Irish people, like myself, are now trading on ebay and will be effectively 'out of business' until the postal service resumes.

I've had to withdraw all my ebay listings this morning as I can't risk packages being delayed or going missing altogether as this would result in possible negative feedback.
 
Hi Rainyday,
Small companies and/or start up's that would not have a good cash flow could be put out of business if there was no post for a few weeks. Even if they are not put out of business they will be hit hard and may have to lay people off or postpone expansion.
An Post unions are literally biting the hand that feeds them. As noted above the management must shoulder a large proportion of the blame for the current situation as well. It's a mess and whatever the outcome we will still have a c**p service that puts an unnecessary drain on the economy. Our postal service will never be totally efficient due to its social responsibility but it could be a lot better than it is now.
Just as our bad physical infrastructure has an impact on out economy so too does our bad public services infrastructure.
 
back again. speaking to dad today and he says that an post bought something like 750,000 post boxes for end of lanes etc but the government stopped them putting them up as they wanted the posties to visit every house and not leave the letters at the end of the laneways etc. also said that an post did a cost analysis a few years ago and rural sub post offices were costing £4million a year loss just to keep them open. strikes me that the government want it two ways, , carry on with the social obligation but also show a profit , if necessary by cutting back on payment of sustaining progress etc. know I am biased but theres no way you would get me out delivering letters in the weather we had to day for €440 per week. no chance.
 
Fair enough Cuchulainn, I agree with you about the weather.

So to all those An Post workers who don't like the rain, leave.

Feel you're not being paid enough? Leave.

Get another job somewhere else.

This is what really irks me about the public sector. The refuse decentralisation, demand benchmarking, etc. etc.

If my company wants to move to Kerry, damn straight I'm not going. I'd leave and get another job. If I feel I'm not being paid enough, I approach my boss, and argue for a pay increase (justified of course by increased efficiency/productivity).

Why the hell should the public sector be any different?

Oh, and another thing - am I alone in thinking its ludicrous that An Post pensioners (and of course all other Public Sector pensioners) get benchmarking, sustaining progress etc? How on earth do they propose to measure productivity gains from pensioners?
 
It seems simple to me. We need a national postal service - put it out to tender. Then as AN POST is a public body anybody that wins the tender gets the post offices for their term of tenure. Also ensure that various regions have their own tender winner so that no one company can hold us over a barrel. I worked for BT in the UK on the IT side of things. We all worked for subcontractors and every few years we had to retender. Boy did we run around making things work in double quick time!
 
The Turkish Gama workers might have a different view about how successful the 'put it out to tender' approach worked.
 
Why were An Post managers moaning about the big overtime bill? They spent 264million on hi tech wizardmachines for sorting that didn't work so they had to bring back the posties on overtime to do it instead. Sounds all too familiar? Too much of the Gama/Irish Ferries thinking going on with the management again. Hope they cut out the rot and get things working properly while theres time.
 
Sherman: I dont work for An Post. My dad worked for Dept P&T and an post for nearly 50years- not a mistprint from he was 16 until he was 65. Post office staff and pensioners do not receive benchmarking and never did. what they were promised though was that when they became 'public servants' as opposed to 'civil servants' that their terms of employment and pension would be the same if they had remained as civil servants. Does not quite appear to be the truth. as for management buying sorting machines that don't work etc . Simple. No one told the manufacturers that we dont use post codes ( or in rural areas even house numbers) so the machines while not worthless are not all they were cracked up to be. worth nothing that while the clerks on the counter, posties on the routes, cleaners in the offices etc are waiting on sustaining progress , top management have agreed to pay themselves A) sustaining progress b) 20% performance bonus. unreal or what? also don't forget that the top manager in an post will only be there for a total of 3 years. and he's on a pension from esb of over €200,000 per annum. political appointee naturally as is the chairperson - a solicitor from Donegal who has DOUBLED her pay packet in the past year. I am on the pensioners side on this one and I make no apologies for that. They have no Charlie McCreevy or Biffo to look after them at budget times. And its NOT RIGHT that they are being denied basic sustaining progress increases on a pretty meagre pension. Most of them have no other income, a lucky few have the DSFCA pension as for one reason or another they were never made permanent but remained 'temporary' for 30/40 years, and thus 'stamped' a full card. Unfortunately my dad is not among them.
 
Hi Cu - I find it extremely hard to believe that such a major purchase would be made without such a basic issue coming to light. Even if the An Post did not raise this issue, I can't believe that the manufacturer would not have discovered this issue during the sales process.
 

I don't , look at the e-voting machines - now costing 680k ( i think was the figure ) a year to store. The port tunnel was well under way when they realised it was too low for the super trucks - then Bertie tells us that we don't want them anyway ! At local level I've seen several examples of monumental incompetence re roads, footpaths, changes to traffic direction etc where changes were made against the advice of local residents . A few months down the line and we saw footpaths being relowered, traffic calming measures removed so basically more money down the pan - important thing is though the pay cheque is still for them at the end of day.
 
Hi Cuchulainne and demoivre, Who do you think is responsible for the catalogue of screw ups that plague this country and hold us back as a society and an economy?
Do you think it is fair to blame the politicians all the time? If it is then we have had consistently bad ministers for the last 50 or so years, of all political hues.
Personally I think they have to shoulder some of the blame but the culture of "them and us" between management and workers in the public sector, for as long as there had been a public sector, cannot be blamed on their transient political masters.
And who is to blame for the utterly useless civil service that we have? It had been a joke for as long as I can remember. Is that all the fault of Fianna Fail or the PD's or Labour of Fine Gael? I think that to say it is, is too easy an answer.
The problems in the public sector can be shared between management, unions/workers and government. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we run our country. Not on a macro level but on a micro one. There are lots of very intelligent and capable people in the civil and public service at both low and high levels but for the most part their abilities and energies are squandered.

I don't know what the answers are but while I have no time for the actions of the postal workers I would be the first to say that the problems that they face are not all of their own making. These issues did not appear over night, there was a complete lack of vision on everyone’s part.
IT systems that didn’t work, post boxes that were never used. Who was held accountable for this waste? Who lost their job over any of these issues? If the problem is political interference then why are the management of An Post not on the radio and TV and giving interviews to newspapers (even incognito) highlighting the problems and trying to get things changed so that their company can be run properly?
And now that the management is finally trying to address the issues why are the unions doing all they can to stop them?
 
Purple: Unfortunately I dont know the answers. Like most things there are no black and white answers to everything. I am led to believe that if the postal workers in the COUNTRY as a whole got a vote on new working conditions they would accept them thus overriding the DUBLIN postal workers who dont want to change. I heard some post spokeswoman on the radio one day saying that some postmen won't do overtime unless they get a 'block' of it, ie more than the work requires. I dont think this prevails outside of Dublin. So the CWU are certainly not blameless. Interesting to see what this independent body who are apparently examing the new work proposals make of the whole thing. We will wait and see ( and hope, but my last word on this is - the An Post should not be taking it out on pensioners who worked for them and now have no one else to provide an income)
 
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