Secretary’s wrap

The Loco Division has been forced to lodge a dispute with Pacific National this week over the company’s handling of the redundancy process.

You can read more about where things are up to in the article below, but the short of it is that PN simply isn’t playing ball. There’s a complete lack of transparency around the process leaving us with no option but to head to the Fair Work Commission. Stay tuned for updates on that one. 

The NSW Budget was also handed down earlier this week. While there’s lots of big ticket transport items in there, there were also a few areas of major concern.

One is the lack of investment in regional rail. Any driver or worker in regional NSW will know that our regional trains are in desperate need of an upgrade. There’s money for a scoping study to be done on upgrading the XPT and Xplorer fleet, but we wanted to see more. Regional NSW deserves a top quality transport system.

Hidden in plain sight in the budget was also a plan to ‘reform’ the delivery of transport services via the establishment of the ‘Transport Asset Holding Entity’.

The budget papers suggest that the “TAHE will eventually hold all of the public transport assets for the State” and that it will “procure and sell assets consistent with Government requirements and lease those assets to the operators (both Government and non-Government) under negotiated leases and other contracts.”

While we’re working to find out exactly what the government’s plans are for this, one thing is for sure – it reeks of plans to privatise our transport systems.

I trust you’ll enjoy this edition of Loco Express. Stay safe on the tracks.