Rail unions have withdrawn all notified industrial action which threatened to cause further chaos for commuters on Sydney's train network.
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TVTranscript
00:00Well, the rail, tram and bus union is claiming this as a win.
00:06Had the case been lost, there was a reasonable chance that it could end up in arbitration,
00:11which is something the union was desperate to avoid.
00:14So it did everything in its power to force the government to drop its case in the Fair
00:18Work Commission.
00:20The government was trying to seek an order to terminate protected industrial action,
00:25which it argued would endanger the welfare of the public and significantly harm the economy.
00:31The union has withdrawn all of that action, everything but essentially action around wearing
00:39badges and putting stickers on train.
00:43But there's nothing to stop the union from coming up with new kinds of potentially disruptive
00:48industrial action, although they can't do it in the immediate future.
00:53We still have other actions that we're able to notify.
00:57Obviously we've got at least a 10 day notification period, so there's a lot of notice if anything
01:02goes on.
01:03I do want to pick up on one of your pieces though, is that so far we really haven't taken
01:09any action that has disrupted the rail network.
01:11We do everything we can to try and prevent disruption to commuters and we'll continue
01:16to do that into the campaign.
01:19The government and the rail unions have been locked in mediation for the past couple of
01:24days here at the Fair Work Commission, but they're still yet to nut out an agreement.
01:30The unions were initially seeking a 32% pay rise over four years.
01:34The state government is offering 15% over the same period.
01:39It's understood the unions have now lowered their pay demands and they now match the government's.
01:46But it has more than 200 demands, more than 100 of which are yet to be resolved.
01:51One sticking point, the union says, is a safety clause which the government wants to remove.
01:56The union is refusing to budge on that matter and it's warning the government that if it
02:00fails to return to the bargaining table, that it will re-escalate its industrial campaign
02:07with different kinds of action.