The Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) announced Friday that it had reached an in-principle agreement with the New South Wales (NSW) Labor government over the wages and conditions of passenger railway workers.
The proposed deal, described by RTBU NSW secretary Toby Warnes as a “very positive development,” is in fact the product of a conspiracy by the union bureaucracy, the Labor government, the industrial courts and the corporate media to sell rail workers out.
Workers have been offered a 12 percent nominal pay rise over three years, plus back pay to May 2024. That is scarcely higher than the current official inflation rate, and far short of what is required to make up for the real wage cuts they have been slugged with in one union-brokered deal after another over more than a decade.
The miserly offer is barely higher than the Labor government’s original proposal of around 10 percent over three years, which was resoundingly rejected by workers almost a year ago. It bears no resemblance whatsoever to workers’ demand for 8 percent per annum over four years, for which the union previously claimed to be fighting.
Workers will now be subjected to a “roadshow” by RTBU officials, telling them “what they stand to gain” from this rotten deal, in an attempt to silence opposition and ram through a “yes” vote on the agreement as quickly as possible.
The timing of the in-principle agreement is significant. It comes just a month before the expiry of a ban on industrial action by rail workers, imposed by the Fair Work Commission (FWC) in February. Working hand-in-hand with the Labor government, the RTBU bureaucracy is seeking to stitch up the deal while workers remain legally sidelined.
Rail workers should reject this sell-out proposal. That means more than individuals voting “no” when the proposed agreement is put to a vote. A rail workers’ rank-and-file committee must be built to lead a struggle by workers throughout Sydney Trains and NSW Trains against the union bureaucracy’s betrayal-in-progress.
Underscoring the RTBU bureaucracy’s determination to ram through this sell-out deal, they denounced the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) for refusing to give its stamp of approval to the proposal.
While the RTBU represents the majority of workers covered by the enterprise agreement, there are several other unions involved, which generally bargain in a bloc, as the Combined Rail Unions (CRU). The ETU publicly split with the CRU earlier this year, after the RTBU cancelled industrial action and resumed negotiations with the government, while workers covered by the electrical union proceeded with limited stop-work actions.
Despite this disagreement, this ETU leadership advanced the same bankrupt perspective as the rest of the CRU, issuing plaintive appeals to the Labor government to “come to the table.”
The ETU leadership is now trying to distance itself from a sell-out it has helped to prepare, fearful of growing opposition from workers.
The RTBU told members in a statement the ETU was “blocking a vote by members, effectively withholding any pay rise or new conditions that our EA delegates have fought so hard for,” claiming disparagingly that this was “for a purpose nobody understands.”
The total inadequacy of the “very positive” offer was laid out by the RTBU itself in July 2024, before rail workers voted in favour of strike action. At the time, the union leadership was fraudulently claiming to be leading a fight for 32 percent.
In a Facebook video, RTBU bargaining delegate Brendan Robinson said: “In 2022, inflation went up over 7 percent, this year it is still over 4.1 percent. Rail workers’ pay, over that time, only went up by 7 percent [in total]. In addition, our members have had to put up with pay freezes both before and after this EA and the previous one.”
As the World Socialist Web Site warned, the RTBU was never going to lead a serious fight for the 8 percent per annum figure. This warning has been borne out at every stage of the dispute.
In August, workers voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action including strikes of up to 24 hours. But the RTBU did not hold a single stoppage for almost two months, until a 5-minute “strike” at 3:10 a.m. on October 24. This absurd token measure, explicitly designed to be a “non-event,” was only called because, under Australia’s draconian anti-strike laws, any form of action voted for must be taken within 60 days, or else workers forfeit the right to take that action again.
A month earlier, the RTBU had called off at the last-minute work bans ostensibly opposing the closure of the Bankstown line and its conversion to driverless operation as part of the privatised “Metro” network. The union leadership had never intended for the limited action to proceed, promising the Labor government that it would be called off if train travel was made free for a weekend.
The RTBU placed similar conditions—which have nothing to do with workers’ demands—on almost all subsequent substantive actions it called. This gave complete control over the dispute to the government, which was effectively able to decide which stoppages could proceed, without ever having to make a single concession to workers.
The ostensible purpose of these conditions was the supposed need to get the “public” on side, by forcing the government to occasionally provide free or discounted travel. This was a total fraud and did nothing to prevent the Labor government from waging a vitriolic and slanderous campaign against rail workers, aided and abetted by the corporate media.
Despite the extremely limited character of the industrial action actually carried out by rail workers, they were accused by Premier Chris Minns in December of holding the people of NSW “hostage,” amid threats from the police that New Year’s Eve celebrations would have to be shut down. The Labor government’s attitude was most clearly spelled out by then Transport Minister Jo Haylen who declared that “no amount of industrial action is tolerable.”
The response of the union bureaucracy to every attack by the Labor government, including multiple legal challenges, was to immediately call off planned industrial action, absurdly declaring that such capitulations were the “way to win.”
Under pressure from the federal Labor government, the pro-business FWC ultimately ordered a suspension of industrial action in February, despite rejecting claims by the NSW government that workers had carried out an illegal “sick-out.” Workers have thus been prevented from actively participating in the dispute for more than three months.
Turning this reality on its head, Transport Minister John Graham claimed, “This agreement will bring relief to the disruption from protected industrial action that a million daily rail commuters have been forced to endure while just trying to get to work and get around.” This is a deliberate attempt to falsely pin blame for recent outages and delays on Sydney’s rail network on workers.
Marching in lockstep, media coverage of the in-principle agreement has cheered on the end of “months of train chaos.” An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald on June 1 declared, “after some eight months of industrial bastardy, commuters have had a gutful of being the collateral damage.”
The RTBU bureaucracy has also echoed these slanderous claims, with Warnes referring to the “long and arduous battle” and stating that the in-principle agreement will “come as welcome relief to commuters.” This is aimed at promoting the false conception among rail workers that there is no broader support for their struggle.
Also noteworthy is the fact that, while Graham is busy blaming rail workers for every failure on the network, Warnes praised “the new Transport Minister for the role he’s clearly played in helping us finally reach this point.”
This complicity underscores that what is required is a fight against the union bureaucracy, which has worked throughout this dispute, and for decades, to prevent workers from exercising their industrial power, as a critical section of the working class with the capacity to bring Australia’s most-populous city to a halt.
In the first instance, a rail workers’ rank-and-file committee will need to wage a campaign among workers to expose the union bureaucracy’s lies and complicity with the Labor government, and build support for the largest possible vote against the offer.
But this is only the first step. Workers need to prepare a set of concrete demands based on their actual needs, not what the government says is affordable or the bureaucrats say is possible, and a plan of action, including strikes, through which to fight for them.
Rail workers cannot carry this out alone. But, contrary to the lies propagated by the Labor government, corporate media and the RTBU bureaucracy, they will find strong support among broad layers of the working class, who all face a similar onslaught.
Rail workers must make a powerful appeal to these workers. To defeat the attack on jobs, wages, conditions and democratic rights, a fight must be taken up to build rank-and-file committees throughout the working class and a unified struggle against the Labor government and the capitalist profit system itself.
Above all, what is required is a fight for a socialist perspective, in which transport and other vital public infrastructure, as well as the banks and big corporations, are placed under democratic workers’ control and ownership, to serve the needs of the entire working class, not deliver ever-growing profits to the financial and corporate elite.