Passenger Rail, Workforce, Certification & Training

Friday strike confirmed, Union claims Metro is milking it

Melbourne Metro train. Photo: Creative Commons / Marcus Wong

The Rail Tram and Bus union says Melbourne passenger operator Metro Trains has cancelled too many services in response to planned strike action between 10am and 2pm on Friday.

Metro Trains announced a revised timetable for customers on Friday, with roughly 700 services cancelled across the network.

But the RTBU, which said last week it would take measures to ensure the strike only impacted the network for four hours, claims the rail operator cancelled more services than it had to.

The union says that the V/Line services – which will not stop through the city network – could still run with the staff provided by the union.

“The RTBU has repeatedly told Metro that enough signalling staff will be available to work on Friday, despite the stoppage, so that V/Line trains would be unaffected,” the union said.

The union says when it announced the strikes it sat down with Metro’s Signalling Manager and agreed on arrangements to allow V/Line services to run as usual.

In the days that followed, the union says it called and wrote to Metro’s Director of Operations to confirm the union’s agreement to ensure workers would cover enough signal boxes to enable third party services such as V/Line to operate as normal.

“On Tuesday, Metro rejected the RTBU’s offer for a skeleton staff of signallers to work during the stoppage,” the union claims.

“Despite this rejection by Metro, the RTBU has continued to volunteer signalling staff to cover the V/Line services on Friday.  As recently as [Thursday] morning, the RTBU wrote to Metro to confirm once again that signal staff would be available to work during the stoppage, so that regional commuters would not be affected by industrial action targeted at Metro.

“If V/Line services are affected by the strike on Friday, it will not be the union’s doing.”

Metro Trains CEO Andrew Lezala reportedly confirmed to News Corp. that with the timetables now in place, the strikes are confirmed to be going ahead on Friday.

“We have had to load up a new timetable, all driver rosters have been issued and it takes 48 hours to call the drivers and change the timetables,” Lezala was quoted as saying.

RTBU secretary Luba Grigorovitch said the union was “fed up with mistruths being spread about the impact of its industrial action”.

“The expected cancellation by Metro of a wide range of services on Friday beyond the four-hour stoppage period comes despite the RTBU’s repeated offers (including on the day of notifying action) to make staff available during the stoppage to ensure that all services which commence before 10am or after 2pm would run as timetabled,” Grigorovitch said.