NSW Rail Workers Are Turning Off Opal Readers Indefinitely

The call emerges as the latest development in what has become a years-long “war” between the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) and the NSW government over pay and a new fleet of Korean-built trains, which the union says is unsafe. 

The back and forth between the government and its workers started about two years ago, but steadily escalated to frequent action in September last year. 

Alex Claassens, secretary of the NSW RTBU, said in a statement on Wednesday that it isn’t the union’s intention to inconvenience travellers. Instead, they want to bleed out the government’s ticketing revenue until they come to the table with a workable deal.

“Turning off the Opal machines will cause a headache for the NSW government and management and will also have the added bonus of giving free travel to our commuters, who have unfortunately had to bear much of the brunt of the NSW government’s continued pigheadedness on this issue,” Claassens said. 

“All we want is safe trains and fair wages and conditions, but it appears the NSW government is more interested in playing political games than in delivering the safe trains and fair wages and conditions commuters and workers deserve.”

The union hopes to turn the screw on similar strike action taken last month, when workers left turnstiles open at most stations across the network, with the same intentions. It failed only because “90 percent” of commuters carried on paying anyway. 

At the end of last month, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet took a cut-throat approach to negotiations, and tabled a “final” pay offer, still shy of what workers were asking for. 

“It ends today,” he said, insisting that unions were engaging in a style of aggressive collective bargaining “that belongs back in the 1970s”. (A period of action that gave passage to 12 months unpaid maternity leave.) 

If the majority of the rail network’s 13,000 workers voted against the offer, Perrottet spitefully threatened to terminate the rail union’s current pay deal and take back a $1 billion compromise to modify the Korean-built train fleet and get it on the tracks.

Newspapers characterised the approach as a declaration of war. 

The government had come off worse for wear, though, after months of failed bargaining attempts undressed the premier and his transport minister, David Elliott, reducing all of their shouty directives to a coarse hum. 

The newest pay deal included pay rises of 3 percent in the first year, and a 3.5 percent bump the year after—in step with its wage policy across the public sector—along with a promise to modify Sydney’s new intercity fleet, which workers say are unsafe.

Shortly after the government issued its ultimatum, Unions NSW deputy secretary Thomas Costa said the move would likely only vindicate similar frustrations being felt across the public sector. 

“I think every union and every public sector worker is watching this very closely and developing their own strategy,” Costa said.

Perrottet’s ultimatum eventually landed his government in a fight with its workers at the Fair Work Commission, as the rail network’s unions try to force the government back into negotiations. 

The hearing will take place on Wednesday, and likely set the stage for even further strike action across Sydney. In its filing to the Commission, the NSW government claimed strike action has so far clocked in at about 44,000 hours of lost work. 

Elliott called the deactivation of Opal readers “economic sabotage”. 

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