Crippling delays, cancellations set to worsen across Sydney’s train network

Sydney commuters have been warned that severe delays and cancellations to trains across the city’s rail network are set to worsen on Thursday due to the ramping up of industrial action, which the state government has labelled as intolerable.

With more than 1000 services expected to be cancelled by the end of Wednesday, Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the government was considering its legal options as the situation deteriorated.

“This is the cumulative impact of hundreds of industrial bans in force across the network,” she said. “We are having trains stand up at platforms sometimes for more than 30 minutes.”

Commuters wait for delayed trains at Burwood station on Wednesday morning.Credit: Steven Siewert

The T4 Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra line was one of the worst affected, with delays reaching almost five hours. Hundreds of commuters queued along an entire block outside the Bondi Junction terminus for buses during the morning peak.

Despite the disruptions, the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has refused to remove work bans, which were described as the root cause of the major delays. The ETU is one of six unions that have been locked in a protracted pay dispute with the government for the last eight months.

With the dispute escalating rapidly, Sydney Trains issued notices to rail workers late on Wednesday, warning them that they will not be entitled to any pay on a day on which they engage in about 87 partial work bans.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said more than 80 per cent of services were delayed or cancelled on Wednesday morning, and only 16 per cent of trains ran within five minutes of timetabled operations.

Acting Premier Penny Sharp (left) and Transport Minister Jo Haylen arrive at a press conference on Wednesday.Credit: Steven Siewert

“As the day has progressed, those cancellations and delays have increased,” she said. “These sorts of delays that we’ve seen [on Wednesday] will continue into the day [on Thursday].”

The ETU’s ban on locking and unlocking padlocks and equipment meant maintenance on machinery at Homebush and Bondi Junction that enables trains to be guided from one rail track to another could not be completed. It forced signallers to manually change signals, resulting in trains backing up on lines.

Work bans at the Rail Operations Centre at Green Square, as well as go-slows by drivers on some sections of track where they can usually travel at more than 80 km/h, compounded the delays.

Longland also warned of potentially lengthy delays on the Central Coast and Newcastle line because safety-critical work planned from midday on Wednesday at Gosford had not started.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland.Credit: Rhett Wyman

“If this action continues in the coming days, we will see similar levels of impact, and potentially it may get worse on Thursday and again on Friday,” he said.

The ETU said in a statement that it was disappointed at the government’s pay offer, and workers would continue taking protected industrial action to bring it back to the bargaining table.

The government has offered rail workers a 13 per cent pay rise over four years, as well as a 1 per cent increase from savings from the merger of Sydney Trains and regional operator NSW Trains, and 1 per cent from legislated super increases. It is still substantially less than a 32 per cent pay rise over four years that the six rail unions have been pressing for since the middle of last year.

However, Haylen said it was the “final pay offer” from the government and represented a significant increase in wages and a “way forward to resolve the dispute”.

Premier Chris Minns is expected to return from holidays on Thursday to manage the fallout from the dispute.

The government has asked rail unions to give it an in-principle response by Thursday, and it intends to put the offer to a vote of the 13,000-strong rail workforce in the coming weeks.

Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) president Craig Turner said a major problem with the government’s offer was the removal of a risk assessment clause inserted in the enterprise agreement in 2022. “Our members were incensed when they put that up,” he said.

The Coalition’s industrial relations spokesman, Damien Tudehope, said commuters had been left stranded and held hostage by the RTBU and ETU. “Jo Haylen’s apologies are now as predictable as Sydney’s train delays: rolling in late, offering nothing new, and leaving commuters stuck with the mess. The unions are running the show, and her leadership is nowhere to be seen,” he said.

After a Christmas and New Year truce, the RTBU restarted 10 major work bans on Wednesday, including the go-slow, a ban on members working with contractors, and another that prevents work to reinstate train services if they have been cancelled.

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