PABO Approved – Time to VOTE for Industrial Action!

Today our legal team and a group of EA delegates attended the Fair Work Commission to argue that it should approve our protected action ballot.

As previously advised, last Friday management and the government decided to object to our application. To be clear about what that means, management and the government decided that they wanted to block each and every RTBU member from exercising their democratic right to vote on whether they wished to take industrial action.

The attempted denial of our core democratic right should send chills down all of our spines and inspire us to fight.

But they lost!

Late this afternoon, the Fair Work Commission handed down a decision that granted our protected action ballot, and members will have the opportunity to vote in the ballot late next week.

In doing so, the Commission found that Sydney Trains and NSW Trains are engaged in operations as a “common enterprise”. The reason for this was that management and the government desperately do not want us to have an multi enterprise agreement and argued that because they are a common enterprise, they shouldn’t be covered by a ‘multi’.

It’s not entirely clear what the consequence of this finding is, but we will await the Commission’s written decision and report back once we have more information.

In the meantime, we still need to boost our numbers in the majority support vote for our multi enterprise agreement. VOTE NOW. If you know someone who hasn’t voted, tell them to vote now! It’s never been more important

In unity, 

RTBU NSW