CASH flow problems in small businesses are likely to be among the most immediate effects of the strike at the Dublin Mail Centre (DMC) which is threatened from Monday night.
The commercial sector is reviewing its postal arrangements in anticipation of the disruption at the centre, which handles more than one million of the two million letters delivered in Ireland each day.
This includes all incoming international mail, as well as mail to, from and within the capital. An Post has already advised customers not to post items in the greater Dublin area until further notice.
Although the Labour Relations Commission has invited both sides to talks on Monday morning, there is little optimism that these will succeed. The two sides will be meeting separately with a senior industrial relations officer of the commission, Mr Tom Pomphrett, because it has proved impossible to find a basis for face to face negotiations.
The company is refusing to meet the Communications Workers' Union if its branch secretary and principal shop steward at the DMC, Mr Brian Shanny, is a member of the delegation. The CWU is not prepared to meet management until it withdraws this precondition to talks.
With little sign of compromise, the director of the Small Firms Association, Mr Brendan Butler, said. We are not interested in the internal wranglings of An Post. It is imperative that this strike does not start."
If it goes ahead, he said, small firms would suffer serious cash flow problems, especially those in the provinces with customers in Dublin. While many new alternatives had been introduced since the last major postal strike in 1979, such as the fax, electronic data exchange and the internet, most small companies were still heavily dependent on An Post when it came to billing customers.
Even within Dublin it would be very costly for small companies to use couriers". Charges of £2 to £5 compared poorly with 32p for a letter.
A spokesman for AIB said it would be asking customers to contact local branches to collect new credit cards or avail of other services normally conducted through the mail. Other banks are understood to be looking at similar arrangements.
A spokesman for Irish Life said the company was particularly concerned at ensuring pension cheques are delivered and is looking at an alternative system to An Post. One of the biggest problems is faced by the ESB, which sends out 100,000 letters a week.
The CWU has given a commitment that social welfare correspondence will be delivered even if the strike takes place.
The decision of An Post to place an advertisement in some of yesterday's newspapers alleging that Mr Shanny was responsible for disrupting mail at the DMC has inflamed the situation. The CWU general secretary, Mr David Begg, described the decision as a new low in the conduct of industrial relations".
He said the allegations were factually inaccurate and, contrary to the company's claims, there had never been an unofficial strike in the DMC. Mr Begg said the company was attempting to make Mr Shanny a scapegoat for its failure to make the centre efficient. He produced figures showing that the backlog of mail at the centre regularly ranged between 200,000 and 500,000 items a night.
Yesterday the Fianna Fail spokesman, Mr Tom Kitt, called on the company to "aback off" its threat to dismiss Mr Shanny and said this was totally unacceptable behaviour. The Labour TD, Mr Tommy Broughan called on the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Lowry, to intervene and also criticised An Post management.