Sydney train strike: Commuter chaos as strike leaves every line and thousands of workers affected

One of the country’s biggest train networks has been thrown into chaos after a strike by unions affected every line in Sydney on Wednesday morning.

Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland advised commuters via talkback station 2GB to “avoid travel on the network” altogether.

“We have issues on the T1, T4 and T8 lines and those issues are cascading across the city,” Longland told James Willis.

“Bondi Junction and Homebush are the most seriously affected stations.

“I would suggest people avoid travelling on the T network for the time being. That’s what I’d be doing.”

During the course of the morning, 2GB’s Willis ran point for Sydney commuters and called out the union for its lingering attempts to squeeze the NSW government for a 32 per cent pay rise.

After being encouraged to call in to Willis’ show by fellow broadcaster Clinton Maynard, the RTBU president Craig Turner was chastised by Willis after his talkback board “lit up” with complaints.

“I’m sorry to say this, you’re taking the piss,” Willis told Mr Turner.

Mr Turner agreed that workers shouldn’t be paid while engaging in strike action but claimed members hadn’t taken action.

“We haven’t taken any strike action yet, we’ve done part-time stuff,” Mr Turner said.

“If it looks like a duck, Craig … that’s what’s happened this morning, mate, you stuffed people around,” Willis replied.

Mr Turner claimed there were 18 trains cancelled out of Campbelltown and Leppington yards on Wednesday morning before crews had arrived.

“They were cancelled by management for no reason, and now I’m getting lots more text messages to say that,” he said.

“We can’t understand what’s happening.”

Willis asked Turner repeatedly what his union had done well in the last two years to warrant the large payrise.

Mr Turner replied by saying that rail workers “do everything pretty well”.

“There’s a cost-of-living crisis, we believe our members deserve it, it’s an opportunity to get a good pay rise, whether it’s eight per cent per year, that’s where negotiations come in,” Mr Turner said.

“We worked through COVID.

“The government have just stonewalled everything, they don’t meet with us.”

NSW Transport MInister Jo Haylen called in to tell Willis of her frustrations over negotiations around the 32 per cent payrise as the RTBU considers the government’s counter offer of 15 per cent.“We are asking the union to very seriously consider accepting this offer to end this dispute,” Ms Haylen said.

“I am feeling for commuters as we continue negotiations that have been going for more than 14 months.”

On Tuesday the government put to the union its new wage offer, which remains significantly below the four annual wage increases of eight per cent the workers have been requesting.

While union officials indicated they were unimpressed with the proposal, they said disruption would be limited throughout the week while they mulled it over.

“The current wages offer ... does seem a little light-on,” Rail, Tram and Bus Union state secretary Toby Warnes told ABC Radio.

“We’re a little bit perturbed by the fact that the government only managed to find one per cent in savings from it, and that those one per cent only came from job losses.

“So that’s obviously something we’re not extremely happy about. I don’t think 13 per cent over four years is going to cut it.”

The government had previously refused to budge from its initial, public sector-wide pay offer, but it said a merger between NSW’s two rail bodies and “productivity gains” - which the union tipped to include 100 job cuts - allowed for the slight bump.

2GB talkback host Clinton Maynard was caught in the crush of commuters and said it was a “shocker”.

“It’s a disgrace,” Maynard said.

“Service after service after service is being cancelled and we are all just standing here as trains don’t appear.”

With AAP.