Sydney commuters warned to avoid non-essential travel as rail strikes continue to disrupt services

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Sydney commuters are being advised to avoid non-essential travel this weekend as industrial action continues to disrupt the rail network. Reporter Sean Tarek Goodwin is at Central Station with the latest on how the strikes are affecting services.

Transcript

00:00Sydney Train says it's not exactly sure at this point what the extent of delays and cancellations

00:07will be across the network and that's because essentially it's not sure exactly how many

00:13workers will show up to work today.

00:15Now this is the product of the latest flare up in tensions over negotiations between the

00:22rail tram and bus union and the state government in a long running saga involving negotiations

00:28over pay, those negotiations broke down on Thursday evening leading to the union telling

00:35its members to go slow on the network over the coming days meaning they would travel

00:4223 kilometres an hour slower than usual.

00:45Sydney Trains then decided that workers who engaged in that action would not be paid.

00:51The union responded again by telling its workers then that they had the option of simply not

00:56showing up to work and that's what happened yesterday.

00:59The state government says that at least 500 workers on the network chose to not show up

01:07leading to lengthy delays and cancellations right across Sydney's train network and the

01:13lines surrounding Sydney.

01:15The south coast line down to Kiama saw no trains running for large parts of the day

01:19and there were lengthy delays through peak times yesterday.

01:24In terms of today we've already seen many services being cancelled across several lines.

01:31For people here at Central Station the impacts haven't yet been as severe but like I said

01:36we're not sure exactly how many workers will show up today and how that will impact the

01:43system.

01:44People are being urged to avoid non-essential travel.

01:47The state government says that it will be back in the Fair Work Commission with the

01:52union today to try to reach a solution.

01:56It says it's using any legal avenue to try to halt this industrial action and it's hopeful

02:02that it can do that this weekend but the union says it wants the state government to come

02:06back to the table and negotiate in good faith over pay.

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