As the unions prepare for a Fair Work Commission fight with the state government this week,they also notified Sydney Trains of more rolling industrial action starting on September 21.
The Opal reader machines on Sydney’s rail platforms will be completely turned off next week.Rhett Wyman
NSW Rail,Tram and Bus Union secretary Alex Claassens said the new measures were targeted at the state government’s coffers without affecting commuters.
“Obviously,we’re making sure that they’re going to be kept open and working the way we want them to work so people don’t have to pay,” Claassens said.
“We want to put pressure on the government and senior bureaucrats,not the travelling public. We’re escalating that particular action,and it will continue indefinitely until there is an agreement with the government.”
While the rail union last month,the card readers on the machines were left on,which allowed people to pay their fares. The government last week said 90 per cent of commuters were continuing to tap on and off the network.
Industrial action on Sydney’s train network has caused delays and crowding at stations across the city.Louise Kennerley
The new action will turn off the entire machine,which Transport Minister David Elliott said will cost millions of dollars in lost fare revenue. Elliott said the new industrial action was “economic sabotage”.
“Yet again,it is the taxpayers of NSW who continue to suffer the impacts of this union action. This is not about safety. It never has been,” he said.
“The latest round of action by Alex Claassens and the RTBU,which will see them deliberately delaying work to functioning Opal machines so that they become inoperative,is akin to economic sabotage.”
The rail agency is seeking urgent legal advice over the action.
Transport Minister David Elliott said the latest industrial action would cost the state millions.James Brickwood
The government and rail unions have been at loggerheads for over a year,unable to negotiate a new pay deal for workers in a dispute that has at points resulted in strike action,delays and disruptions across the Sydney rail network.
In documents filed to the Fair Work Commission last week,the NSW government estimated that the ongoing industrial action.
The unions launched legal action in the Fair Work Commission earlier this month in a bid to force the government back to the bargaining table after Premier Dominic Perrottet if rail workers did not vote for a new pay deal.
The hearing on Wednesday will be pivotal to the reliability of Sydney’s rail network.
The unions have warned in their filings to Fair Work that if the commission does not intervene,“there is limited prospect that the dispute will be resolved in the short term without very significant industrial disputation”.
The unions last week claimed the two sides had appeared to be on the cusp of an agreement before Elliott told them at a meeting earlier this month that the government was withdrawing from bargaining.
The government has offered rail workers pay rises of 3 per cent in year one and 3.5 per cent in year two,which is in line with its wage policy for public sector workers. It has also agreed to make changes to the mothballed intercity fleet,which rail workers are refusing to staff due to safety concerns.
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