Embattled An Post faces losses of 12m without hike in stamp price

Poised this weekend on the brink of a major industrial dispute, An Post is understood to have budgeted for operating losses for the next two years. Internal accounts have predicted that the present resistance by the Communications Regulator (ComReg) to an increase in the price of a stamp will doom the company to losses of 12.5m in 2006 and that could rise to 20m in the following year.

Furthermore, the company management, under CEO Donal Curtin, is believed to have told ComReg it will be acting contrary to its statutory obligations if it forces An Post to incur these losses.

An Post sought to increase the price of a stamp from the present 48 to 60 earlier this year, arguing that its prices had been increased only once in the past 12 years.

But while ComReg agreed to meet some of the pricing demands, it refused to concede that the company should get its main demand of a 60 stamp. But the spectre of these losses is, of course, only one of the issues weighing on the State company just now.

The news on Friday that the company’s employees in the Communications Workers Union have decided on industrial action in pursuit of their pay demand has launched An Post into fresh crisis.

At the centre of this is a series of difficult demarcationdisputes that the management is determined to reform and which the union will stoutly resist. With just under 10,000 workers, An Post payroll represents over 70 per cent of its total costs.