Furious Aussies slam Sydney Trains strike as travel chaos looms in the lead-up to Christmas and New Year’s Eve – as Qantas shares an urgent message to travellers
Angry commuters have slammed Sydney Trains and Buses as they face yet another round of potential strikes in the lead-up to Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
NSW Premier Chris Minns earlier this month secured a last-minute Federal Court Injunction blocking the rail union from taking industrial action.
However the court dismissed the state government’s technical argument trying to invalidate the industrial action on Thursday afternoon.
The dismissal gave Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) the green light for up to 8,000 workers to strike in the lead-up to the festive season.
The move could see trains across the Harbour City come to a grinding halt for up to 24-hours at a time, causing travel chaos for commuters.
NSW TrainLink said services for Wollongong and Bomaderry had already stopped running on Thursday, with fears more train lines will be affected in the coming days.
The strikes have caused outrage among Sydneysiders, with commuters lashing out at the union and government for failing to reach an agreement.
‘Outrageous. Sick of these clowns,’ one person wrote on social media.
Angry commuters have slammed Sydney Trains and Buses after commuters face yet another potential round of strikes in the lead-up to Christmas and New Year’s Eve
The union has not said when or if industrial action will take place but threatened that workers would do ‘whatever it takes to achieve what they deserve’
‘The government are clowns. If only they’d negotiate with the workers,’ a second person agreed.
A third added: ‘I love when they said on TV that nothing they do is against the people then immediately threatened to shutdown the entire network. Like stop d***ing around people’s lives’.
Meanwhile, Qantas has sought to reassure passengers industrial action by maintenance engineers will not impact the airline’s flights in the lead-up to Christmas.
The airline said it has put contingencies in place for industrial action on Friday, and similar action from engineers earlier in December had no impact on customers.
But unplanned maintenance issues, adverse weather, or other events could still impact operations, the flagship airline said.
‘Our teams are working hard to ensure that this industrial action has minimal impact on customers’ holiday plans and we have put a number of contingencies in place and extra resourcing on the ground to ensure our customers get away as planned,’ a Qantas spokesperson said in a statement.
Qantas said about 160 line maintenance engineers were rostered to work during Friday’s industrial action and that additional groups taking action were part of long-term maintenance teams that did not perform day-of-operation engineering support.
