FOUR DAYS ago, Mr Brian Shanny was unknown outside the Dublin Mail Centre (DMC). Today he is a household name. The decision by An Post to target Mr Shanny and personalise the dispute at the DMC was, in the words of the general secretary of the Communications Workers' Union, Mr David Begg, "unprecedented" in recent Irish industrial relations.

It was also, as some management sources privately acknowledge, a major blunder.

The issues in dispute at the DMC are not the sort that should cause a major strike. They are about improving working conditions at the plant and giving staff greater flexibility in how they process the one million items that pass through the centre every day.

In fact, according to management, the problems were on the way to resolution through talks at the Labour Relations Commission when the company produced the letter on July 10th announcing that Mr Shanny was facing disciplinary procedures. Mr Begg says it was subsequently confirmed to him by senior management that Mr Shanny was facing dismissal.

Last Friday, the company escalated this aspect of the dispute with an advertisement containing allegations about Mr Shanny in relation to disruption of mail at the DMC. Management was probably stung into action by the union's challenge of the previous day to show one "blemish" on Mr Shanny's record as an employee during 38 years of service with An Post.

The only "blemishes" An Post could produce referred to Mr Shanny's activities as union activist. The CWU says that even these are factually inaccurate.

The subsequent angry exchanges shed far more light on the level to which relations between both sides have sunk than on the substantive issues in dispute at the DMC. The company has come to believe that Mr Shanny is a major obstacle to good industrial relations at the plant, while the CWU is convinced he is being made a scapegoat for the failure of the company to make the £15 million state of the art plant in Tallaght, Co Dublin, as efficient as the old central sorting office in Sherriff Street, Dublin.

By now, An Post must be learning that it is in danger of making Mr Shanny a martyr. The only effect of Friday's advertisement has been to rally CWU members across the State around him. It has also generated sympathy for Mr Shanny across the trade union movement.

Despite the myth of shop stewards as titans of the industrial world, the reality is that they have few powers. One of them is the right to say "No" when management tries to push through changes in breach of existing agreements.

Mr Shanny has certainly exercised that right and maybe he has done it in a way that annoys An Post management. Colleagues admit that he has a tendency at limes to crow over victories on the shop floor. But then Mr Shanny must run for election each year and it is no crime to remind your electorate of what a good job you are doing.

Ironically, because he is regarded as part of the old CWU establishment - he is a member of its executive as well as DMC branch secretary - Mr Shanny is seen as an opponent of change. The very virtues that have made him stand up to disruptive elements within the union in the past, and ensured his members accepted the outcome of difficult negotiations, are seen as vices on the other side of the table when he uses his authority to support industrial action in defence of working conditions.

After a decade of national agreements and increasingly sophisticated "partnership" deals which have reduced strike figures in the Republic to a fraction of the 1980s level, the dispute at An Post is like a throwback to another era. It is ironic that it involves a union that has been a leading exponent of the "partnership" approach and one of the few semi state companies that is expanding its workforce.

The present dispute could see a substantial loss of commercial business from companies sick of the seemingly unending threat of disruption to services. Already this year, An Post has had a month long strike by clerical staff and the threat of a further strike by junior managers.

An Post says its actions are governed by the need to ensure consistency of services, but staff no longer trust senior management. Only last week, the union representing middle ranking managers in the company, the Association of Higher Civil Servants, produced the results of a survey showing that only 3 per cent of its members believe top management in An Post "display a genuine interest in staff". Only four per cent "believe there are general feelings of trust between unions and management in An Post".

The Price Waterhouse report on An Post, produced earlier this year, identified poor management structures as a problem requiring urgent attention. But An Post management, in turn, seems to have identified one voluntary union official as the root of its problems in the DMC.