Train drivers’ new pay demands branded ‘total lunacy’

Rail, Tram and Bus Union branch secretary Darren Phillips with Natasha Brown and Nev Kitchin from the Public Service Association at an anti-privatisation protest in July. Picture: Emma Brasier

The Rail, Tram and Bus Union expects to learn from the Truthful Function Fee on Monday whether it will be permitted to choose industrial motion amid promptly climbing tensions in excess of new enterprise negotiations.

It will come as a breakaway group of about 100 train motorists and related employees also interact their possess bargaining staff to offer with the Condition Authorities, and are giving to accept a two per cent once-a-year increase in excess of the following four several years.

The RTBU is trying to find 4 per cent in every single of all those several years, but said it was prepared to trade pay for other problems, which includes superior COVID-19 protections.

Mr Lucas who has lashed the RTBU as “tone deaf” to the plight of other employees dropping their jobs and pay for the duration of the coronavirus economic downturn, said it was “now abundantly crystal clear that the union bosses are hoping to choose us all for a experience with their ludicrous log of claims”.

The Adelaide Operation Control Centre moved to Dry Creek two several years back, 13km from the CBD centre.

Mr Lucas said the union argued the vehicle clean assert was justified as automobiles ended up in an “industrial environment”, and a vacation allowance was reasonable because of to getting “disadvantaged” by the additional vacation out to the centre.

“Anyone who has been to Dry Creek appreciates it is barely the Simpson Desert,” he said.

“It’s time rail union bosses appreciated the sizeable monetary challenges facing SA taxpayers because of to COVID-19 and negotiate in good faith.”

Other negotiating details include things like making it possible for motorists who are shifted from duties just after failing medical clearances to maintain the very same pay, and double time and a half for an complete shift whenever some additional time is incurred on that day.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg states Labor’s proposed amendment to the JobKeeper scheme, which would see a minimum payment of $600 doled out to all contributors, would “cost jobs”.

RTBU SA and NT secretary Darren Phillips said Mr Lucas was engaged in an insulting attack on frontline employees who had been between the most at threat for the duration of the pandemic, and it was important to lock in tricky-acquired problems ahead of privatisation.

“There are sure products that arrive up for the duration of the existence of an enterprise agreement that you test to resolve,” he said.

“If you just cannot, you can choose them to the table for negotiations. That is what happened.”

Mr Phillips also rejected as “just not appropriate and an insult to train drivers” Mr Lucas’s assert that the most effective-compensated employees would receive $161,000 a yr additionally additional time under the once-a-year 4 per cent pay pitch.