Pity that the (transport) unions FAILED to consult/secure agreements with the police (emergency workers/union) to not provide infringements which will bound to irritate passengers late for their appointments or rendering attending such events impossible, and to add insult to injury receive a fine because they misheard another person's Opal Card ding when their own reader light was still "red"
Crowding is bound to happen when customers don't know if the next train will arrive in 15 or 45mins. The availability of service is actually worse than or comparable with trackwork, as you don't know if the next rail replacement bus service would come in 2, 14 or 35min. The amount of locked off carriages is also becoming more ridiculous, why isn't there campaign material advising customers to help by not unnecessarily vom*tting/sh*tting all over a carriage would prevent overcrowding in the other available carriages and help all stay safe including staff travelling alongside customers (to ensure timetabled services can run), being able to physically distance?
https://www.ourrightsourfight.com.au/ this website is all done well and bravo, I learned a lot as a railway outsider from the videos, however can I recommend anyone who happens to be a unionised worker, union organiser or leader reading this, I understand this is probably a fight of the generation admdist major social changes brought upon by the pandemic.
Please leave something that will benefit the next generation of workers and the travelling public, think about campaigns that disrupt the traditional notion of 9-5 office hours. Perhaps stop running morning and/or afternoon peak services so that will force greater adoption of office alternate locations for work, encourage earlier/later starts that suit the individual worker rather than just the employer and the employer only.
When this pandemic is over, this will help staff work much more easier with the peak hours loads spread out more evenly, rather than all bunched together before the impending "before 9am deadline" resulting in very unhappy customers due to excessive and unsafe patronage load numbers, stress for people "needing to get in by 9", stop signallers pulling their hair out when lines and trains are tangled up , decrease stress for staff worrying about people spilling onto the tracks from crazily crowded conditions at legacy width platforms at major interchanges ETC!
Selfish motives will only leave the next generation of potential union members yet to join feeling isolated, not being able to decide whether joining is worth it (for what?) or safer to be spent paying off the mortgage to keep a (leaky) roof over their heads and minimising the amount of interest/account fees or continuing to smash avocados.
Non-union member staff on duty during that time at Hurstville station?pgt wrote: ↑Fri Aug 19, 2022 10:26 pm Re the "open gates" industrial action:
I suspect last Sunday somebody at Hurstville didn't get the memo (as I recall it the industrial action started before that?), since the gates were closed/in the normal position.
(Having seen the gates open at Town Hall the day before, this is why I thought this was notable).
One thing I did notice was that where gates are "open", the Opal readers on the gates appear to alternate directions - which means those who wish to tap on/off have to wait for the reader to go from red to orange.
