DELEGATES have been told that the State's largest union, SIPTU, has written to Telecom Eireann telling the company that it will not accept any more deliveries of telephone directories by 10 and 11 year old children.
Telecom contracted out the delivery of directories this year as a cost cutting exercise and there have been several reports of children being used for Dublin deliveries.
However, one CWU delegate said that it was not just the cost factor which had led to the company decision. Members had to face up to the fact that "we gave a bloody bad service. The bottom line is that a lot of deliveries were not covered by our members last year and I think that was the decisive factor."
The CWU wants the Government to introduce mandatory jail sentences for people found guilty of assaulting postal workers. This follows a rapid increase in attacks on members, particularly in the Dublin area, over the past year. The assistant general secretary of the CWU, Mr Terry Delaney, said that in the United States an attack on a postal worker was treated as a federal offence and similar protection was now needed here.
The union has also raised the issue with An Post and an agreement has been made with the company on the provision of counselling services for victims of attacks. In a separate initiative, Mr Delaney said the CWU has been in touch with the unions in Dublin Bus, where drivers are also exposed to significant risk of assault.
On competition in the postal market, Mr Delaney said that if the new legislation was not carefully drafted, it could lead to the taxpayer having to subsidise the service. In Spain, where competition was already a reality, courier firms had cornered the lucrative end of the market, such as the collection of tourists' postcards home, while services to remote areas had to be subsidised by the state.