The Board of An Post has confirmed it is to close its loss-making parcels and couriers division SDS and will reintegrate the business into An Post mail collection and delivery operations.
Management proposals to address chronic losses will lead to 270 voluntary job losses, the sale of the existing SDS premises at Naas Road and the transfer of its central parcels hub to Portlaoise.
An Post Chief Executive Mr Donal Curtin said the decision was regrettable but unavoidable.
"Moving the central parcels hub to Portlaoise will help eliminate costly duplication and overlap and enable the company to be more efficient and effective as it continues to provide its range of high-quality courier and parcels processing," he said in a statement.
The decision to revamp SDS, which last year shed 114 jobs and saw the introduction of owner/driver operators, is part of management attempts to return An Post to financial stability. The company reported operating losses of €43 million for 2003.
An Post employs 450 workers, at six separate SDS sites, as well as 46 owner/driver operators. Some 180 staff will transfer to other positions within An Post. Voluntary severance or voluntary early retirement schemes will be available to the remaining 270.
The company expects to complete staff transfers and reintegration measures by the end of the year and to begin revamped operations by February 2005.
The General Secretary of the Communication Workers' Union, Mr Stephen Fitzpatrick accused An Post management of a "deliberate and premeditated" attack on the current talks at the Labour Relations Commission on the transformation of the national postal service.
The CWU chief said that it was disingenuous and misleading of An Post management to suggest that the number of voluntary redundancies planned for in the closure of SDS is 270.
He condemned An Post's "crass attempts" to gloss over the fact that in addition to the numbers directly employed in the SDS service, a further 367 employees of An Post were exclusively engaged in SDS operations around the country.
He pointed out that the employees impacted under the SDS decision were additional to the 1,450 staff to be made redundant under the wider restructuring of the postal service.
Mr. Fitzpatrick, who had earlier met with An Post management to demand clarification on the board's decision, later met members of the CWU at SDS headquarters on the Naas Road to brief them on the latest developments and to consult them on the appropriate course of action by the union to secure their future.
Following that meeting, the CWU chief said workers in the SDS service are "very worried and very, very angry. Their anger is focused on the arrogance and the deceipt of An Post management who as late as Monday of this week were still pretending to be committed to an open and transparent process of engagement with workers' representatives on the future of the service."
The Labour Party accused the Minister for Communications, Mr Dermot Ahern, of allowing An Post to stumble from "crisis to crisis" and called on him to advance the restructuring plan for the company.
Senator Derek McDowell appealed to the Minister and to management at An Post to keep job losses at SDS to a minimum.
"This development is symptomatic of the ongoing worrying drift in the fortunes of An Post with little or no adequate response from management or the Minister for Communications," he said.
The Fine Gael Spokesperson on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources Simon Coveney TD MEP, said that there was clearly a need for An Post to explain why they do not have the capacity to deliver a much needed express postal service.
"I cannot understand why, despite the fact that there is a clear demand from Irish business and consumers for a fast post service, that An Post cannot compete with other service providers and make the SDS service viable," he said.