The risk of railway strikes causing major disruptions to New Year’s Eve celebrations was exaggerated by the NSW premier, the head of the state’s rail union has said.
Amid , the NSW Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) dropped eight major work bans late on Monday, casting the last-minute changes as necessary to help ward off actions to “effectively crush” its bargaining strategy.
They include distance limits for drivers and various signalling bans that had forced more than 680 cancellations over the weekend.
Following a Fair Work Commission (FWC) hearing on Tuesday, NSW RTBU branch secretary Toby Warnes took aim at the state government’s recent rhetoric.
“We have always said it was a stunt by Premier (Chris) Minns and his friends in the big business community. There was never going to be any rail shutdown or major disruptions on New Year’s Eve and now there certainly won’t be,” Warnes said.
“We trust people can now safely assume the fireworks will go ahead. They were never not going to go ahead, but we understand people were uncertain of that because of the government’s rhetoric over the past three weeks.”
In a subsequent social media post, the union criticised what it called a “government scare campaign that
The union has also agreed to drop a solidarity action and one other by the Electrical Trades Union to ensure public safety over the holidays.
‘Services will now run as planned’
NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen has said she is pleased with the union’s decision.
“Christmas, New Year and the Sydney Test are too important to the state, and I am pleased to report they are now safe as the union has withdrawn their industrial action,” she said.
“The holiday period is now safe for passengers and, for businesses. They can plan and provide confidence that we can have staff get to work safely and families can travel around the CBD with confidence, get in and out for the New Year’s Eve fireworks.
“New Year’s Eve train services will now run as planned.”
Pub and bar operators, a casino and the NSW Labor government had planned to argue at Tuesday’s FWC hearing that train driver work bans planned for New Year’s would cause significant harm to third parties and potentially endanger life.
Organisers say Sydney’s NYE fireworks are watched by another 400 million people globally, with an economic impact estimated at $280 million.
New Year’s Eve is also the busiest day on Australia’s largest rail network, with rare all-night running shuttling people across the state.
Earlier, NSW Police warned of “grave concerns” for safety if the one million people expected to line Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Eve struggled to leave after the midnight fireworks.
Some 3,200 services run about every five minutes throughout the day, with crunch time coming in the hour after midnight as the masses try to leave together.
“While it’s frustrating to have to adjust our planned actions, our ability to pivot and respond strategically is crucial in the face of these dishonest and immoral manoeuvres,” Warnes told union members on Monday night.
“Withdrawing a small amount of our actions was not a backdown — it was a strategic step to defeat their legal argument,” the union said in a social media post on Tuesday morning.
Union and government still at odds
The union and government remain poles apart after
Unions continue to demand four annual wage increases of eight per cent but Minns says that’s unaffordable and can’t happen while he is denying nurses a similarly costly claim.
The government has offered 11 per cent across three years, including superannuation increases.
Work bans recommenced on Thursday after a court dismissed a government bid to have them made unlawful.
The saga could drag on for several more months.
The Fair Work Commission cannot be asked to settle the substantive dispute — pay and conditions — until February.