Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has warned against industrial action at An Post.
The Communications Workers' Union (CWU) is to ballot its members on industrial action in a dispute over the company's failure to honour national pay agreements.
Yesterday, Mr Ahern warned that industrial action would only deepen the problems and put jobs at risk. "I urge members of the CWU to consider very carefully the options before them," he added.
"It is not open to Government to change the realities faced by the company and its employees." He accepted, he said, that there were difficulties, but the path recommended by the Labour Court was the only sensible solution and he recommended it most strongly to the employees of An Post. "We will see where we go from here," he added.
Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said there was a serious underlying grievance of workers who could not be described as highly paid, operating in a very high-cost society, and who were still not provided with the basic increases agreed under the social contract. "That especially impacts on the position of pensioners," he added.
Agreeing that many An Post workers were not highly paid, Mr Ahern said the company was under significant pressure. The hard reality was that there were now many private operators in the delivery business, and e-mail and other technologies had taken a large part of the business.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said he had noted the report in The Irish Times outlining the Taoiseach's concern about social partnership, arising from the actions in Irish Ferries. He asked Mr Ahern to comment on the decision by Siptu's executive council to withdraw a motion it had tabled for the union's biennial conference mandating it to enter into talks on a successor to Sustaining Progress. This was done because of the redundancy controversy in Irish Ferries.
Mr Ahern said he did not have a chance to read the full script relating to social partnership by Siptu president Jack O'Connor, whom he regularly met, but he could understand his concerns about Irish Ferries and other companies.
"Siptu has had its own difficulties on the Gama issue over the years. It is important for the union that we do not get into a race to the bottom and that the protection of employment standards is an important public policy goal," he added.
