EA update: Sydney Trains and NSW Trains refusing (again) to commence bargaining

29 May 2024

Dear Members,

We’ve been pushing for bargaining to commence since the beginning of the year, and we served our log of claims months ago. Disappointingly, in a repeat of recent history, Sydney Trains and NSW Trains are once again refusing to commence bargaining, despite our enterprise agreement expiring on 1 May 2024.

Members may recall that at the beginning of our last bargain in 2021, we were forced to survey all members in order to apply to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) to force management to the table.

Although we thought that this approach could be avoided this time, for reasons that make no sense to us, we are being forced to do the same again.

The circumstances are somewhat different this time given that the bargaining system under the Fair Work Act has changed in the past few years, and NSW Trains as an organisation will change significantly on 1 July 2024 with the transfer of the Intercity back to Sydney Trains. If you want to read more about this, we’ve created a guide that you can access here.

Given these changes, we believe that in order to maintain one agreement across Sydney Trains and NSW Trains, we now need to apply for a “Single Interest Employer Agreement”. The process to drag the employers to the table is the same – we need all members to indicate that they wish to bargain for a Single Interest Employer Agreement through a vote.

It’s vitally important that we get a majority as soon as possible, so please spread this email and the survey link far and wide.

You can vote here.

The sooner we get this vote over the line, the sooner we can get to the bargaining table and fight for our log of claims.

In Unity,

RTBU NSW