The NSW transport minister will meet with a union later Wednesday afternoon to try to avoid the threat of train chaos in Sydney this weekend.
Meanwhile, a former Liberal NSW transport minister has claimed the Labor state government’s decision to scrap a wage cap is behind the current dispute with the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU).
NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen told reporters on Wednesday morning her government was doing “everything it can” to avoid disruption to train services.
“I believe that there is a package that is on the table that the union can consider, and we’re gonna continue those conversations this afternoon,” Haylen said.
“My priority is to make sure that we close this out as quickly as possible, while continuing to ask the union to lift their bans to keep our network running and get people where they need to go.”
Andrew Constance weighs in
Also on Wednesday morning, Andrew Constance — who was NSW’s transport minister for more than six years before quitting in 2021 — told Crikey the abolition of the public sector wage cap had been “a disaster”.
“[Premier Chris] Minns personally chose to abolish the wage cap, and it was a cap that was designed to allow public sector unions to negotiate above the 3% with productivity offsets — so they could get paid more than 3%, but they had to find productivity offsets to achieve it,” Constance said.
“With the loss of that discipline, it’s the taxpayer who has to fork out more taxes to cover the wage bill of the state.”
Constance claimed that in his entire time as transport minister, he never had a train strike.
“We had really good union bosses back in the day, who would prioritise the travelling public and not their members,” he said. “You can’t treat the travelling community like this. I think it’s incumbent upon the union to go see the minister and the premier today, get the strike called off, and reach some sensible agreements around efficiencies.”
In praising the union leaders he used to deal with, Constance specifically mentioned his good relations with Unions NSW secretary Mark Morey and former RTBU NSW branch secretary, now national secretary, Alex Claassens. That’s despite the latter telling reporters during a dispute with the state Coalition government in 2018 that Constance was a “villain”, and The Sydney Morning Herald reporting the relationship between Claassens and Constance was “beyond repair”.
Constance’s argument about the wage cap abolition was echoed in a Daily Telegraph opinion piece by the newspaper’s NSW political editor James O’Doherty. The piece claimed RTBU NSW secretary Toby Warnes had “admitted” to holding commuters to ransom when he told ABC radio the union’s planned action, which had prompted Haylen to threaten to shut down the network over the weekend, was “part of enterprise bargaining negotiations” that could end if the government offered more money.
Union demands 24-hour service
The RTBU has industrial action planned for the weekend, amid an ongoing wage dispute with the government.
The months-long dispute between the NSW government and the state branch of RTBU escalated on Tuesday when Haylen announced no train services would run for four days.
The rail union had been increasing work bans and threatening to strike if 24-hour services weren’t available on those four days.
The union complained of government “misinformation” about its planned action in a statement issued on Wednesday morning. Several news outlets, including ABC News and the SMH, had been reporting that, in the words of the latter outlet, “train services were originally meant to stop at 10pm on Thursday, but will now cease about 4.15am on Friday”, following negotiations between the parties.
But the union claimed its action was never meant to start on Thursday.
“The action was notified to start after the last train service on Friday morning if the additional services didn’t run … there was never an intention to take action on Thursday,” the statement said.
“We’re all used to misinformation, we saw it time and time again during our last bargain. It is what it is, and we all know to take politicians’ words with a grain of salt.”
Haylen told the 2GB radio station on Tuesday that the union’s demand for 24-hour services on weekends was “simply not sustainable”.
“In the end, it will result in the network completely failing,” she said. “We don’t want a situation where we’re trying to operate a train service at 3 o’clock in the morning, and as a result, we can’t operate a train service at 3 o’clock in the afternoon when people actually need it.”
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