New Timetable Concerns

As members will be aware, Transport for NSW have developed and are about to implement one of the most aggressive timetables Sydney has witnessed in many years. The Locomotive Division holds grave concerns as to the ability of Sydney Trains to be able to successfully deliver and maintain the vast amount of new services being provided in this timetable. These concerns centre around the lack of train crew, in particular drivers, that are available to run the current timetable, let alone the new one. As it stands today, Sydney Trains are already struggling, and have been for months, altering and amending drivers daily working to add additional hours and increased mileage as well issuing ever increasing amounts of overtime just to maintain current service levels.

This begs the obvious question, if the system is a breaking point, how are they ever going to be able deliver come the 26^th November, ‘with fingers crossed’?

To date and in an effort to fill the void , drivers acting in various other non operational roles have been forced to return to drivers rosters.  Additionally, Sydney Trains has been contacting retired drivers and offering them re-employment in order to address the shortfall. This driver shortage on Sydney Trains has had a flow on effect to NSW Trains, albeit to a lesser extent, with Sydney Trains now required to hold onto its drivers and not allow transfers to NSW Trains due to ‘operational constraints’. All of these cumulative issues have had an obvious negative impact on drivers as they becoming increasingly fatigued and disgruntled with these management practices which have and continue to impact on their personal and family lives.

As the rosters for the new timetable are produced and displayed to members, the groans of ‘here we go again’ can be loudly heard. On perusal of various depot rosters it very quickly becomes obvious that the shortage continues with vast amounts of overtime being allocated/expected across the board for the first fortnight of the new timetables operation. If the only way to deliver this timetable is off the back of drivers having to work continuous overtime then the Loco Divisions concerns are well founded as this not a sustainable working practice being applied to an already fatigued and disgruntled workforce.

This whole situation has come about from poor business decisions over an extended period starting with the Sydney Trains Reform process. When Sydney Trains embarked on a Reform process that encapsulated virtually every award and working condition that drivers have today (they wanted it all like a kid in a lolly shop) they did so with one hand tied behind their backs thanks to the NSW Government wages policy. The end result was obvious in the current low moral environment being experienced by drivers. Unfortunately the business pinned all its hopes on ‘the kid getting all the lollies’ and stopped driver recruitment in 2015 for over a year against the continuous  advice of the Loco Division and now here we are two years later experiencing a driver shortage, who’d have thought!

Whilst recruitment has recommenced on a vast scale, it is clear that the drip feed of graduates did not start soon enough to satisfy the new timetables manpower demands.

As drivers have always gone ‘over and above’ to provide their professional services to the public , one has to question the sustainability of, not only the new timetable, but the drivers abilities to maintain the current and projected work expectations being applied to them on a daily, weekly and fortnightly basis?