Madam, - Your Editorial of November 15th on An Post was informative and factual to a point. But lazy, biased and uninformed journalism was again in evidence with the usual "blame the workers" clichés trotted out.
Your paper should be aware of the following:
1. There has been a considerable improvement in the quality of service provided by An Post this year which has been independently verified by ComReg, the Postal Regulator.
2. Accepting the need for continuing improvement, the union and the company are striving to achieve the targets used by ComReg.
3. Agreements are in place which will deliver substantial change. These are being implemented at a pace which has been independently verified by a monitoring group appointed by the Labour Court.
4. The transformation of An Post has required massive investment in new automated systems which are in place without any input from the taxpayer, while at the same time the company is obliged to provide loss-making social services without any financial support from the State.
It is disappointing, but not surprising that your paper did not see fit to comment on the damage done to An Post by the previous management regime which in three short years managed to devastate the quality of service utilising now discredited financial data. Sadly the scandal of that time is now conveniently ignored in favour of your easy target on this occasion, "the workers in An Post". Why am I not surprised? - Yours, etc,
STEVE FITZPATRICK, General Secretary, Communications Workers Union (CWU), North Circular Road, Dublin 1.