Rail union and state government meet at Fair Work Commission for full hearing

By ERIN MODARO

The Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RBTU) and state government are back at the Fair Work Commission (FWC) today for a full hearing, trying come to an agreement after over a week of industrial actions. This comes after the FWC told the NSW government on Tuesday that they couldn’t block further industrial actions by rail workers.

The FWC decided that they would dismiss the governments push to stop the planned industrial actions, as the RBTU announced that the FWC had ruled in their favor over continuing protected actions, and said that further actions would commence this week.

Although there are no planned actions today, Sydney train networks continue to experience disruption due to operational issues and wet weather.

Union says government claims of 50% reduction in trains due to industrial actions is ‘misleading’

The RTBU has said in a media release today that the government’s claims over their industrial action has been “deliberately misleading”. The union stated that government claims of 50% reduction in train services this week because of the protected industrial action is “complete rubbish”.

RTBU NSW Secretary Alex Classens said that “none of the protected industrial action taken by rail workers recently should have had any notable impact on rail services at all”.

“The NSW Government’s claims that union action is responsible for a significant decrease in rail services are not just disappointing, they are blatant lies.”

The union changed its action plan this week in light of the state of emergency in NSW over wet weather, and as a result have been running services at 70% of standard capacity, as opposed to the planned 30%.  Classens says that the current actions are designed to have minimal effect on passengers, with the actions made to impact managers rather than commuters.

This week, the union’s actions include “a ban on transit officers issuing fines on public transport, a ban on a small number of foreign-made trains, and other actions designed to impact management rather than commuters”.