‘Fat cats’ claim over $750,000 rise in rail union’s employee expenses
Rail union staff expenses spiked by $750,000 while hundreds of thousands of Sydney commuters were hit by devastating disruptions to their daily commuting, it was revealed today.
NSW
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Questions have been raised over a $750,000 jump in employee expenses paid out by the rail union to their staff, despite their workforce growing by just one full-time member.
The Rail, Tram and Bus Union’s own financial statements for their NSW branch show just one extra permanent staff member was added to their workforce from 2020 to 2021.
In that time, employee expenses jumped by $755,241 – from $3,242,996 to $3,998,237.
The union’s own financial report in 2021 stated “The increase in employee expenses as compared to prior was significant”.
Treasurer Matt Kean claimed “union fat cats” were the reason for the blowout in expenses.
“It appears that disrupting hundreds of thousands of commuters is lucrative work,” he said.
“The union fat cats are earning more even though their membership is going down.”
Rail, Tram and Bus Union NSW secretary Alex Claassens said in addition to hiring an extra staff member, “there have been short-term additional resources brought in at various times to help deal with the huge increase in workload bought about by the NSW Government’s ongoing fight with rail workers”.
“Trying to ensure the NSW Government and other employers don’t get away with putting commuters on unsafe trains and driving down wages and conditions is not an easy job.”
He added the union also had other basic staff costs, such as redundancies, to pay for, saying “Our books are as transparent as they could possibly be and every single cent the union spends is accounted for”.
The union and the government remain locked in a bitter dispute over pay and working conditions.
It came as Labor voted against a motion calling on them to remove Mr Claassens from the NSW Labor administrative committee, and to return all affiliation fees and donations from the union – totalling more than $800,000 since 2008.
Liberal MP Nathan Smith moved the motion, saying there was a “bromance” between Labor and the union,
Labor’s transport spokeswoman Jo Haylen said the motion was “nothing more than pretty cynical politicking from a government that is absolutely desperate to district from their litany of public transport failures”.
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