216 SDS staff express interest in redundancy deal

An Post has extended the deadline for expressions of interest in a severance or retirement package being offered to staff at its SDS parcels division, which it is planning to close.

Last night, the company confirmed that 216 SDS staff had already expressed an interest in taking an offer of severance or early retirement.

The company wants to transfer 180 SDS workers into the An Post business and shed the remaining 270 jobs at the parcels division. The parcels division will then be reintegrated into the parent company in January.

An Post's head of public relations, Mr John Foley, said the fact that 216 staff had, by the deadline of last Friday, expressed an interest in leaving meant "workers have voted with their feet". He said one failing of the company's efforts to reintegrate the parcels division was that too little information had been made available to SDS staff on the 180 positions on offer to them in the wider company once SDS closes.

An Post was currently compiling this information and it would be made available to staff at SDS from Wednesday. The company has set a further deadline of December 7th, by which time it hopes to have secured from SDS staff the required number of job losses and expressions of interest in being transferred into the parent company.

Union opposition to the plan means postal services face disruption in the run-up to Christmas.Members of the Communications Workers' Union have already voted by a nine-to-one majority for action up to and including a strike if the company broke existing agreements.

The union says the company's decision to close SDS, which it confirmed last week, is such a breach. No action can take place this week, until a seven-day notice period has expired, but some disruption is likely next week.

An all-out strike is unlikely. It is anticipated that the union is more likely to engage initially in short-term stoppages or other forms of limited action. Postal staff earn increased overtime during the pre-Christmas rush, and would be unlikely to jeopardise this through all-out industrial action.

An Post has already written to more than 3,000 SDS customers advising them of a withdrawal of services from December 1st.