POSTAL DRIVERS ARE to seek an injunction in order to prevent their expulsion from the Independent Workers’ Union (IWU).

The Independent Workers’ Union was in talks to merge with Unite, one of the largest trade unions in the country. But Dublin postal drivers who are members of the IWU have claimed that Unite announced the presence of the An Post drivers was “a barrier to any further progress to those [merger] negotiations”.

Unite said that this was because they had no authority to represent these workers and their rights, adding that it cannot “even put forward and argument” for why they should represent postal drivers.

There are approximately 80 postal drivers, all employed by An Post in Dublin, who are members of the IWU. These drivers were members of the Communications Workers’ Union, but left the union and joined the IWU in January 2019.

The National Executive of the IWU agreed that all Dublin postal drivers who recently joined the union would be asked to “resign their membership”, and sent a letter out to the postal drivers last month to state as much.

This decision was based on a report into the circumstances in which the postal drivers were taken into the IWU after leaving the Communications Workers’ Union.

The report recommended that the drivers return to their original union.

The Dublin postal drivers said that although court action against unions is usually taken by employers, they took this action, on behalf of the drivers, because “our members have been arbitrarily and illegally deprived of the democratic rights that our union handbook mandates them”.

 We believe the right for all workers to the freedom to join a union of their choice is a fundamental right and we are prepared to fight for it by all necessary means, within the law.

The Independent Workers’ Union did not respond to a request for comment.