NSW government presses on with legal bid to block industrial action

Rail unions have withdrawn all notified industrial action which threatened to cause further chaos for commuters on Sydney's train network.

Transcript

00:00Well, the rail, tram and bus union is claiming this as a win.

00:06Had the case been lost, there was a reasonable chance that it could end up in arbitration,

00:11which is something the union was desperate to avoid.

00:14So it did everything in its power to force the government to drop its case in the Fair

00:18Work Commission.

00:20The government was trying to seek an order to terminate protected industrial action,

00:25which it argued would endanger the welfare of the public and significantly harm the economy.

00:31The union has withdrawn all of that action, everything but essentially action around wearing

00:39badges and putting stickers on train.

00:43But there's nothing to stop the union from coming up with new kinds of potentially disruptive

00:48industrial action, although they can't do it in the immediate future.

00:53We still have other actions that we're able to notify.

00:57Obviously we've got at least a 10 day notification period, so there's a lot of notice if anything

01:02goes on.

01:03I do want to pick up on one of your pieces though, is that so far we really haven't taken

01:09any action that has disrupted the rail network.

01:11We do everything we can to try and prevent disruption to commuters and we'll continue

01:16to do that into the campaign.

01:19The government and the rail unions have been locked in mediation for the past couple of

01:24days here at the Fair Work Commission, but they're still yet to nut out an agreement.

01:30The unions were initially seeking a 32% pay rise over four years.

01:34The state government is offering 15% over the same period.

01:39It's understood the unions have now lowered their pay demands and they now match the government's.

01:46But it has more than 200 demands, more than 100 of which are yet to be resolved.

01:51One sticking point, the union says, is a safety clause which the government wants to remove.

01:56The union is refusing to budge on that matter and it's warning the government that if it

02:00fails to return to the bargaining table, that it will re-escalate its industrial campaign

02:07with different kinds of action.