An Post and the union have been on a collision course for some time, writes Chris Dooley , Industry and Employment Correspondent
About the only positive thing that can be said of the industrial action getting under way in An Post is that we have had plenty of time to see it coming.
For at least the past 18 months, the company and the Communications Workers Union have been on a collision course that seemed destined to end in a damaging strike.
Despite such foreknowledge, however, nobody has been able to forestall the debacle now unfolding.
The issues in the dispute appear straightforward in themselves and in normal circumstances would be capable of resolution.
The circumstances at An Post are anything but normal, however, and it is difficult to imagine a worse industrial relations climate in any company in the State.
This is why the dispute has proved such a tough nut to crack and why there is little expectation of an early breakthrough.
There are two parallel issues at the centre of the row. In the first instance, the action is over the company's refusal to pay the full terms of Sustaining Progress to the Communications Workers Union's 8,500 members.
Having suffered heavy losses for several years prior to 2004, it pleaded inability to pay the terms of the national agreement.
While workers did get a 5 per cent increase in January, recommended by independent assessors, they had been due to receive a cumulative total of more than 13 per cent .
The second issue concerns the company's desire to implement major work-practice changes in its collection and delivery operations, which employ about 5,500.
The CWU says it accepts the need for cost-cutting changes in this area, but negotiations with the company at the Labour Relations Commission last year failed to produce an agreement.
A three-man technical group, including industrial relations troubleshooter Phil Flynn, was then called in to examine the issues. It produced a 65-page draft "agreement", proposing major changes to the way postal staff do their work, which the Labour Court adopted in full and recommended to the parties in July.
The recommendation was accepted by An Post but rejected by the CWU.
It cited four main stumbling blocks, including what it described as a "divisive" decision to alter the pay and conditions of collection and delivery staff while other workers retained existing conditions.
The central issue for the union, however, was the court's decision to link the two issues referred to above.
CWU members should be paid the outstanding increases under Sustaining Progress, it said, but only if they agreed to the work-practice changes in collection and delivery.
The court's decision was in line with the recommendation of the independent assessors who had been called in to examine the company's "inability to pay" claim.
The CWU, however, insists that the cost-of-living increases due under Sustaining Progress are a separate issue and should not be linked to the changes sought in collection and delivery.
In effect, it claims, its members in the collection and delivery operation are being held to ransom: only if they agree to detrimental changes in their working conditions will more than 3,000 CWU members in other areas of the company, as well as An Post's pensioners, get their cost-of-living pay increases.
The work-practice changes envisaged would give management more flexibility in the way it operates the postal service.Postmen and women would lose the right, for example, to apply for and hold a particular delivery route or duty.
In return for implementing the changes, staff would receive an increase of 6.7 per cent - on top of Sustaining Progress - over two years, as well as a 4 per cent "productivity allowance".
One postman however who contacted The Irish Times yesterday claimed the increases would be almost entirely offset by the loss of existing allowances.
The mood among colleagues, he said, was very much in favour of the strike going ahead. That much at least has been clear for some time.