Aurizon NSW Coal Enterprise Agreement 2025

Earlier this week, your negotiating team met with Aurizon’s representatives to continue work on a new enterprise agreement.

Rosters

Despite the long-term success of ‘Roster E’ in the Hunter Valley, Aurizon are still against locking in the roster permanently. Your negotiating team has proposed to move away from having ‘Roster E’ locked in, in return for increased roster conditions if Aurizon were to take away ‘Roster E’ in the future.

These conditions were:

• A 12-month off-ramp when moving away from ‘Roster E’.
• Wollongong moves to the standard master roster conditions (8 shifts per fortnight).
• Night shifts and day shifts are evenly balanced across the roster. Although this balance can be altered by agreement with the depot.
• Aurizon to drop its claims relating to Driver Only Operations.
• Improved conditions for the ‘Standard Master Roster’:
  • 75% of lines have a minimum of 5 RDOs per fortnight.
  • Minimum of 44% of weekends off.
  • The ability to bank DIL days for every public holiday, regardless of whether the public holiday is worked or not.
  • No single RDOs.

Your representatives believe these positions are fair and have tabled them to move these negotiations forward. The ball is now in Aurizon’s court, and hopefully, Aurizon will engage constructively instead of crying poor every chance they get.

Grain

Your representatives invited Aurizon to come to the table with conditions they believe will make grain working more sustainable, and then took these positions to members to see which of these proposals can be accommodated. Aurizon has also spent the last few meetings explaining that they are happy with the way grain operations currently operate and that it has been making money. Considering all these points, your negotiating team put forward a balanced proposal that would see grain essentially work as it currently does with increased flexibility for Aurizon to seek new work if members are agreeable. These changes weren’t enough.

Aurizon tabled what they believe employees who work grain may be open to. It is an understatement to say these positions were not well received at the table. Aurizon’s proposal would allow them to send members away on a temporary transfer for 4 weeks without their agreement, on three days’ notice, and to move members’ RDOs and zones so they don’t make any money out of being abruptly uprooted from their home life and plans. Concerningly, these changes would encompass all employees, not just members who have agreed to work grain trains.

Your negotiating team remains committed to conditions that see grain work sustainable, but Aurizon’s proposal is beyond ridiculous.

Wages

When asked, Aurizon confirmed there is no movement on their wage position. Although Aurizon now acknowledge a wage repair aspect and has confirmed their last offer considers wage repair. This completely ignores the profits that Aurizon has made over the previous 4 years while members’ living standards were declining. From 2022 to 2025, Aurizon reported total profits of over $1,645,000,000, or over $1.6 billion. The wage repair aspect of your wage claim is approximately $7.5 million or 0.46% of the profits Aurizon has made over the last 4 years.

Aurizon management has failed to convince members that Aurizon’s offer is fair, so they have pivoted to tactics that try to convince train crew that they are greedy and that nurses deserve a pay rise more. This is absurd for a couple of reasons.

1. What Aurizon pays its employees does not come from the pockets of nurses; it comes from the massive amount of profits Aurizon earns off the back of train crews’ hard work and Australia’s natural resources.
2. Nurses do deserve to be paid more. That’s why the RTBU’s NSW Secretary has supported the Nurses through joint press conferences, solidarity actions, and even accompanying the Nurses Secretary to meetings with politicians to help them in their fight for better pay.

If Aurizon wants to talk about greed, it should start at the top. Paying the CEO $4 million a year to sit on his hands says more about corporate excess than anything a train driver earns. RTBU members are part of a movement that supports all working people in their pursuit of better pay. Aurizon management should think twice before they try to guilt-trip members into taking less money so shareholders — not nurses — can have more of the pie.

Next steps

Aurizon insinuates that it is your bargaining team holding up progress by standing firm on a wage claim that members deserve. Bargaining would progress faster if Aurizon were willing to share more of their profits, didn’t propose slave like conditions for Quirindi and members who work grain, and responded to positions put to them weeks ago. It is getting old fast that your team listens to what Aurizon needs, provides positions that look for solutions, and then Aurizon takes weeks to respond or complains that positions are more beneficial to members than to them.

Your team has almost finished submitting all positions from the initial survey to Aurizon for their consideration. Once all positions have been put to Aurizon, we will return to the members for further instructions on how to proceed.

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