Dispute: Notch 4 Driving

In December 2010 RailCorp announced it wished to instigate this change to current driving practices by having drivers move the master controller straight to 4 notch instead of progressively stepping up to full power.

It was explained that this would generate power savings to the tune of over $1 million a year however, when this was discussed, it was agreed that further work would be required prior to implementation as current Driver training is not in line with this proposal and a risk assessment would be required.

It was then discovered that RailCorp intended to move into a trial of this proposal which resulted in the RTBU going into dispute over RailCorp’s failure to properly consult under the 2010 EA. Whilst RailCorp have now advised that they did not intend to go into trial before consultation, (they were just seeing if a certain depot would take part)! The dispute remains as we are not convinced by RailCorp’s response.