NSW: NSW trains: Off the rails or back on track?

AAP General News (Australia)
02-13-2004
NSW: NSW trains: Off the rails or back on track?

By Joe Hildebrand, State Political Correspondent

SYDNEY, Feb 13 AAP - The Carr government has wheeled and dealed its way out of another
crisis in resolving this week's mammoth train dispute.

But a string of questions still hangs over its initial handling of the matter and just
how many problems still linger in Sydney's rail network.

An agreement between the parties suggests the government was at least partly misleading
in claiming increased safety measures were the sole cause of driver discontent.

Certainly safety is mentioned in the preamble to the pact, but in the eight key points
thereafter it rates not a scratch.

This is in keeping with the drivers' and the Rail, Tram and Bus Union's consistent
position that it was the overall (poor) management of a system that relied absolutely
on driver overtime that sparked the dispute.

RTBU secretary Nick Lewocki said shortly after the deal was brokered that the safety
crackdown in the wake of Waterfall was "just the straw that broke the camel's back".

There was also "the feeling of the government blaming a dead train driver" that enraged
the workers.

The government attempted to manipulate this position into one that suggested the drivers
- or at least the 300 or so working to rule - were anti-safety.

Yet their very action - working only their strictly rostered hours - proved beyond
a doubt the point they were trying to make.

Even at the height of the crisis, only around one quarter of the system's 1,200 drivers
were refusing to work overtime.

That alone was enough to cause hundreds of cancellations and leave tens of thousands
of passengers stranded or hopelessly late.

Other ludicrous actions - like stopping an entire train because of two birds sitting
on the tracks - appear little more than spiteful to passengers.

But broadly the drivers' point was well made.

The government was forced to either admit that its entire rail system was hopelessly
flawed - or "brittle" as RailCorp boss Vince Graham tactfully put it - or blame driver
recalcitrance on safety.

They chose the latter.

The government also made much of drivers being obliged to work overtime under the current
enterprise bargaining agreement.

Actually drivers are only obliged to make themselves available for reasonable overtime,
a standard feature in many EBAs and awards.

It is true that there had been a culture of drivers wanting overtime to top up their base salary.

The government has expressed exasperation that what can be seen as a deliberate short-staffing
to accommodate this, at the behest of the union, is now being used by that union against
them.

Nonetheless the threat of up to 15 per cent of drivers being removed from active service
due to the tougher medical examinations could have made it almost impossible for the holes
in the roster to be safely filled.

And it would appear to even the most casual observer that a system so throughly reliant
upon overwork was at best vulnerable to collapse and at worst patently unsafe.

Coincidentally the aforementioned EBA expires at the end of next month and negotiations
were due to begin on January 1, even though they are yet to start.

Both sides insist this had nothing to do with the dispute but the opposition smells
something fishy.

Certainly it's fair to say that the union was aware of the timing - as must have been
rank-and-file drivers.

The union's defence that the renegade drivers had never demanded money, is somewhat
weakened by the fact that under the deal they now receive a bonus of up to $400 a month
for overtime they would already be paid for.

Above and beyond the substance of the dispute is the approach taken by both sides to resolve it.

The union initially distanced itself from the renegade drivers, Pontius Pilate style,
but then miraculously appeared to meet with all of them this week and then broker a deal
on their behalf.

Meanwhile Transport Minister Michael Costa, ironically a former train driver and RTBU
official himself, took an approach that basically said: "You can call me but I'm not going
to call you".

It took three days before the two even sat down together and another 24 hours to reach a deal.

That's all now in the past, as both parties are keen to remind us, and it's time to move forward.

Whether the agreement is anything more than a band-aid solution remains to be seen,
but the politically-fuelled and last minute nature of the deal is hardly an ideal approach
to long-term infrastructural planning.

Indeed it may give some insight as to why the rail system was so flawed in the first place.

AAP jh/sal/cjh/jlw

KEYWORD: NEWSCOPE NSW AAP NEWS ANALYSIS

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