Govt Rejects Offer From Sydney Train Workers To Stop The Holiday Strike

Sydney Trains rail workers have offered to immediately stop the ongoing industrial action — a train strike which will severely disrupt all train services over the holiday season, particularly Sydney’s beloved New Year’s Eve celebrations – but they have conditions.

The olive branch, which was delivered late on Sunday night, says major industrial action would stop, but only if the statement government offers free fares to customers, and drops their current legal case against them.

Tensions continue to rise between the government and the RTBU and five other unions over pay — but the railway members say they would also commit to not taking any new industrial action until 7 January.

Government refuses unions’ offer to stop NYE train strike

But this morning the state government denied the offer, saying the railway union simply “just need to drop their action”.

The government also confirmed their case against the unions, for the industrial action to be suspended or terminated, would be heard by the Fair Work Commission on Christmas Eve.

A statement from a NSW government spokesperson read, “We will keep all legal options on the table to ensure this industrial action does not impact the holiday period.”

“As we’ve said before, this would cost millions of dollars that we don’t have. And if we did do it, the people of NSW know that it has to be paid for by them in another way. It’s just not affordable.”

The state government, in its case to the Fair Work Commission, said that it was concerned that industrial action and major delays on public transport on New Year’s Eve put the public at risk of deadly crowd crushes and antisocial behaviour.

Union asks for free fares until new enterprise agreement approved by NSW Govt

A condition within the late-bight offer from the RBTU demanded that free fares would be provided across the entire public transport until a new enterprise agreement from Fair Work for Sydney Trains and NSW Trains was approved.

The government says this would cost them $127 million per month.

“The unions have demanded free travel twice before, which the government has agreed to, and the unions went straight back to taking industrial action,” the spokesperson said.

According to a statement from NSW Transport the “unpredictable nature” of industrial action continues to cause cancellations and delays. On Friday (20 Deceember), nine trains – totalling around 80 trips – were cancelled and approximately 30% of railway services did not run on time.

Albanese says he supports actions taken by Premier Chris Minns

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed he had spoken to Premier Chris Minns about the issue, and told media that he supported the actions of Minns and the NSW Government.

“This is a dispute that … should be settled, and common sense should prevail, said the PM this morning. “We support the actions which the Minns government are taking.

“The RTBU need to be responsible, and common sense needs to apply here. And they need to understand that they will lose public support if they engage in activity that disrupts the public during at time like this, over Christmas and New Year’s.”