The $4500 sticking point that sent Sydney trains into chaos

Finally, after nine months of stalled negotiations, rail union bosses were convinced a deal was almost done on Thursday. Union officials, NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey’s office and Transport for NSW bureaucrats had spent hours in the NSW Labor caucus room in Macquarie Street fine-tuning the last details of a pay deal for 13,000 rail workers.

The pay offer, RTBU secretary Toby Warnes and Unions NSW assistant secretary Thomas Costa were convinced, could still be improved and there was one bargaining chip left: a $4500 one-off payment they had struck with the former Coalition government.

Forgoing that payment could boost the overall pay offer to a level that train drivers and guards could accept. But it was that payment, and feverish disagreement, which ultimately brought the entire negotiations crashing down, and plunged Sydney’s train network into total chaos.

By lunchtime on Friday, not a single train in Sydney was running on time, and hundreds of services cancelled, after more than 300 workers did not turn up for their shifts.

In November 2022, the then-Perrottet government agreed to pay all rail workers a $4500 bonus payment to end its protracted industrial dispute with the combined rail unions. With a state election looming, it did not need an ongoing brawl with workers who could cripple the transport system at any stage. Months earlier, then-premier Dominic Perrottet had also handed health workers a $3000 “thank you” payment in recognition for their work during the pandemic.

But that $4500 payment to rail workers, and a bitter clash over its continuing existence, has become the final sticking point in the latest industrial row. Transport for NSW, led by secretary Josh Murray, is adamant that the clause in the previous enterprise agreement, which says, “each employee will receive a one-off payment of $4500” was to be struck out in the new deal. The agreement to axe it was reached in a September meeting of a drafting committee, Transport for NSW insists.

Unhappy commuters stranded at Parramatta Station on Friday morning.Credit: SMH

Union officials vehemently disagree. They argue removing it was never in the government’s log of claims – a list of new conditions to be included in an agreement – and it should be honoured. Late on Wednesday, one of those officials texted Mookhey’s chief of staff Michael Buckland, and put a proposal to him.

“We are working through clauses we could trade in the current EA,” the text said, referring to the $4500 bonus clause. “We would be prepared to trade this off for an equal value per cent increment to base pay.” That text was enough to send immediate fury through the government, which had thought it was hours, or at worst a day, away from a deal.

The government maintains the $4500 payment was dumped on them at the eleventh hour on Wednesday as a last-ditch ploy to extract more money from Treasury. The government’s offer is 12 per cent pay rise over three years, including super, and back pay to May 2024.

Murray, who had largely relied on his bureaucrats to negotiate with the unions, arrived at Macquarie Street at about 6pm on Thursday to lay down the law. The $4500 was never on the table and enough was enough. As of midnight, so-called 471 notices would come into force for some 5000 workers. This meant that if any workers turned up to work on Friday and did not carry out their full duties, they would be docked pay.

Tensions went from zero to 100 in seconds, sources in the negotiating room told the Herald, and the civil war between the unions and the government, which looked closed to being resolved, was reignited.

As commuters were left stranded on a muggy Valentine’s Day Friday, the government circulated copies of a 2023 Fair Work Commission judgment to support their argument, which confirmed the deal struck by the then-Coalition government and the rail unions.

In it, the commission referred to the payment as “one-off”, and quoted communications sent by Transport for NSW to rail workers at the time which stated it was “in lieu” of back pay. While the commission said there was “no evidence” to suggest the rail unions agreed with that statement, there was “likewise no evidence” they disputed it.

In other words, as Mookhey said on Friday, the clause was linked to back pay, which was not an issue in the current bargaining. “The idea that somehow Dominic Perrottet government would have done this secret sweetheart deal with rail workers only is beyond belief,” Mookhey said.

“The way in which bargaining takes place is unions begin by lodging a log of claims, and clearly they did not include this in their log of claims,” Mookhey said. “They are disputing as to whether they needed to [but] ultimately, ordinary common sense would suggest that if you are asking for $60 million in pay, you’d claim it.”

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