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NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is threatening to go to the Fair Work Commission if the state’s rail workers strike again, as the long-running dispute continues.
Commuters were frustrated again on Wednesday as rail workers refused to work on the foreign-made locomotives that make up about 70 per cent of Sydney Trains’ fleet.
“Negotiations are over. We’ve made concession after concession after concession and some of those concessions were not in the interests of the taxpayers of NSW,” Mr Perrottet told reporters on Wednesday.
The action is the culmination of a month of industrial action including area-based strikes, and workers refusing to drive trains that don’t pass maintenance standards.
Mr Perrottet said the government has made its “final offer” to make alterations to a fleet of mothballed Korean-built intercity trains the unions says are not safe to operate in NSW.
Any further industrial action would lead to the government terminating the current agreement and asking the Fair Work Commission to settle the dispute, he said.
“It’s very clear in my view, the union is using our people as political pawns. It ends today” the premier said.
Most timetables on Wednesday have been reduced to a 30-minute frequency, while services are suspended on the T5 Cumberland and T7 Olympic Park lines.
Compounding the disruption, bus drivers will be off the job in Sydney’s inner west as part of a separate dispute with Transit Systems, the private company contracted to run services.
Region 6, which includes the inner west, some of the CBD, Olympic Park, Strathfield and Rockdale will be affected by six hours of stop work action split across the morning and afternoon.
Meetings between unions with Transport Minister David Elliott were planned for Wednesday as negotiations for a new enterprise agreement to replace one that expired in May 2021 continue.
The Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) secretary Alex Claassens said the negotiations can end on Wednesday if the government agrees to a few more things.
“There’s always negotiating room … if there’s any way that a deal can be struck that makes everyone happy, absolutely we will do that,” he said.
Opposition Leader Chris Minns doesn’t believe industrial action will force the government’s hand.
“The message from the NSW parliamentary Labor Party couldn’t be clearer: we don’t want the strikes,” Mr Minns said on Wednesday.
Mr Claassens said the union is disappointed in the Labor MPs.
“We expect the Labor Party to be going out there and standing up for workers’ rights,” he said.
“We will go back and have conversations about what it means to be in the Labor Party.”
Mr Claassens also took aim at “boofhead politicians” and “shock jocks” he accused of stoking “the dregs of society” to abuse rail workers.
Delegates on Tuesday decided the union would no longer refuse to drive trains that did not meet the government’s minimum maintenance standards.
The union said workers and their families have been subject to abuse including death threats, which have been referred to police.
-AAP
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