Union boss Alex Claassens has called out NSW transport minister Andrew Constance for allegedly leaking “false” overtime statistics to the media, as sides continue to argue over an enterprise agreement to cover workers for the next four years.
‘Secret roster modelling’ reportedly leaked to The Daily Telegraph this week suggests Sydney Trains’ new timetable results in an average of five minutes per shift of extra overtime for workers.
This is despite the Rail, Tram and Bus Union’s continued assertion the new timetable stretches the workforce too far.
When the union banned overtime one Thursday last month, Sydney Trains was forced to operate on a Saturday timetable.
RTBU NSW secretary Alex Claassens labelled the statistics detailed in the Telegraph story “incredibly disappointing”, “completely incorrect” and “deliberately misleading”.
The union labelled the report “yet another offensive swipe at the hard-working men and women of the railways”.
“How you can even suggest that railway workers aren’t being stretched to capacity given the chaos we’ve seen on the railways recently beggars belief,” Claassens said on Tuesday.
“Just last week, the transport minister was claiming that workers’ ban on working overtime was going to bring the city to its knees, and today the leaked report is claiming that workers hardly do any overtime. Which one is it, Andrew Constance?”
The union is currently in the second week of a six-week ban on industrial action as part of its dispute with operators NSW Trains and Sydney Trains.
The ban is the result of a Fair Work Commission decision on January 25, which blocked a planned 24-hour strike on the transport network.
The Commission found the strike – and indeed any industrial action – threatened “to endanger the welfare of a part of the population – including the large number of people in Sydney and surrounding areas who rely on the services provided by Sydney Trains and NSW Trains to get to work, attend school or otherwise go about their business”.
“The NSW Government went to court in an attempt to stop workers from continuing the ban on overtime work because it was claimed that it would cripple our transport system,” Claassens reflected this week.
“Ask anyone who works in the industry and you’ll hear the truth – Sydney’s rail service is completely reliant on workers doing large amounts of forced overtime. When railway workers announced we were refusing to work our rostered days off, it caused Sydney and NSW Trains to cancel large numbers of services and run a weekend timetable. How it can now be suggested that there’s barely any overtime being worked is puzzling.”
The sides will meet on Wednesday for the next round of negotiations, after the latest offer was rejected by workers.
“Rather than looking for ways to try and discredit workers, the transport minister should be sitting down trying to negotiate an enterprise agreement that provide workers with fair wages and conditions,” Claassens said.
“All railway workers want is to secure a fair enterprise agreement so we can get back to doing what we do best – keeping the railways ticking.”
Was it a Master or Working Roster that was leaked? The Master is the Utopia, the Working the reality. They are often a long way apart…