SUBPOSTOFFICES must fight back against the banks with a marketing campaign, according to local union officer Jenny Clarke.
She will try to get the National Federation of Subpostmasters to mount an initiative to explain their plans for introducing new banking services and to try to halt the loss of customers.
A group of around 30 subpostmasters recently met Post Office Minister Alan Johnson in Plymouth but came away with no answers to their immediate problems.
Jenny Clarke, who is the union representative for Tavistock, Princetown and East Cornwall, said 10-12 subpostoffices had closed in her area in the past year and more could follow unless an effort was made to prevent it.
Post office managers were pleased to have the new Horizon computer system and were looking forward to the establishment of a Universal Bank in 2003, she said, but it was the transition period which worried them.
'We are faced with the loss of our Social Security work to the banks and have little new coming in to replace it,' she said. 'We need to do something now to persuade our customers to stay with us.'
She will write to Alan Butlin, a south-west member of the federation's national executive, asking him to consider urgent action to defend the subpostoffices' business..
The government has promised the post offices an injection of £30 million in 2003, by when it says that benefits and pensions will be paid through banks.