Since its enterprise agreement expired six months ago, the Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) has been pushing for new, fair contract with the NSW Labor government and private operators.
The union is pushing for an 8% pay rise in each year of the four-year agreement and a 35-hour work week, down from 38 hours.
Transport minister Jo Haylen has offered 3.5% in the first year, 3% in the second and 3% in the third, as well as superannuation increases this year and next.
RTBU secretary Toby Warnes said Chris Minns’ government is dragging its feet in responding to the union’s claims for better pay and conditions for rail workers. “It’s unacceptable that we have gotten to this point,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald on November 8.
“Our members’ pay has effectively gone backwards while government and management twiddle their thumbs and constantly delay progress on the [enterprise agreement].”
Minns gave NSW Police a 39% pay rise over four years, as well as a one-off payment and improvements to allowance and pay scales, on November 12.
The RTBU is campaigning for 24-hour services across Sydney on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, which it said Sydney should have, being a “global city”.
However, NSW Labor says it is impossible to provide such a service and is pushing back against the union’s enterprise claim, as well as its demand for a better public service.
In support of its new enterprise agreement, the RTBU has trialled a 24-hour timetable.
“Throughout the last few months our actions have repeatedly pressured Sydney Trains and the Government to agree to, or do things, they have claimed they just couldn’t do,” the RTBU said on November 13.
“At every step they stress that it’s just not possible, but clearly this has been an excuse and has never been true.”
It said since Labor’s “weak wages offer” to transport workers, it has provided pay rises to other public sector workers “well above” that.
However, the Public Sector Association, which covers some transport workers, accepted a 4% wage rise offer at the end of October.
In a bid to get public support for its claim, the RTBU has reduced tram speeds to 10 kilometres an hour until the government cuts fares to 50¢ a trip and makes travel free on passenger trains over a weekend.
The RTBU said it would impose an indefinite ban on work unless trains operate 24 hours a day on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Sydney Trains has put on extra services from Thursday to Saturday, which forced some track maintenance to be cancelled.
The RTBU is also pushing for afternoon and night shift penalty rate rises; a rise in “on-call” claims when staff are called in to manage incidents; for meal allowances to be paid every four hours of the shift worked, regardless of start and finish times; for shifts that go into or out of a public holiday be paid at the public holiday rate for the entire shift (the Fair Work Commission has recently ruled that employers cannot force people to work on a public holiday); and an upgrade to Electrical Safety Allowance qualifications and more.
The RTBU said on November 12 that light rail workers were being threatened with being locked out for taking part in partial work bans.
“Transdev have refused to even sit at the negotiation table, let alone attempt to resolve the dispute. The Government has done nothing to help.”
It said light rail members have been bargaining with private operator Transdev for more than 18 months and, for the past 3 months, Transdev has refused to even negotiate.
It said contrary to Haylen’s comments, “there will be no interruption to normal train services this week, they will run normally in the day and then all night”.
It also said that contrary to her suggestion that Sydney Trains and NSW Trains “are negotiating to get the bargain done”, the union has had to fight “week in and week out” to ensure they even show up to bargaining.
“We want this bargain finished by the end of the year, but the government seems content to sit back and let it ride. This isn’t going to fix itself.”
The RTBU said “reducing public transport fares would increase patronage, reduce congestion on our roads, drive people back to our CBDs, as well as provide much needed cost of living relief”.
It pointed to Queensland, where fare reductions and the higher frequency of services led to a substantial rise in bus and train use, and said it shows what can be done.