Sydney trains to run on New Year’s Eve as unions and Minns government reach last-minute agreement

Sydney’s New Year’s Eve celebrations appear set to enter full swing after rail unions and the state government struck a last-minute deal to tone down industrial action authorities had warned could force them to cancel public events.

The New South Wales government had lodged an application at the Fair Work Commission to have the combined rail unions’ planned actions – which included limitations on the distances train crews could operate over the new year period – suspended on the grounds they would pose safety and economic risks on the evening of 31 December.

Lawyers for the government and the rail unions appeared at the commission on Tuesday morning in what was expected to be a full-day hearing, with a range of witnesses providing evidence.

But lawyers informed the commission that the parties were close to reaching an agreement. They emerged from discussions about 10am, informing the FWC’s deputy president, Bryce Cross, that the unions had agreed to withdraw bans that would have affected services on and in the lead-up to New Year’s Eve.

The unions also provided an undertaking to the commission to not take any existing or new industrial actions that would pose a threat to New Year’s Eve services.

The concessions from the unions followed the NSW Rail Tram and Bus Union dropping a handful of other bans late on Monday evening. The unions’ guarantees on Tuesday led the Minns government to withdraw its application to have the unions’ industrial action suspended.

Distance limits for drivers and various signalling bans forced more than 680 cancellations at the weekend.

On Tuesday, after the agreement was struck, NSW transport minister Jo Haylen said: “We didn’t want to be in this situation, and there are no celebrations from the government today.”

She said the bans the unions agreed to withdraw gave the government confidence in the level of services for New Year’s Eve.

But she also acknowledged the government and unions remained in a deadlock over a new pay deal. With the most disruptive industrial actions only suspended from 26 December until 3 January, the potential for work stoppages remained.

Haylen said she did not know when negotiations would restart, as tensions remained following weeks of accusations of bad-faith tactics from both sides.

The NSW opposition leader, Mark Speakman, warned the last-minute agreement was in effect “chaos kicked down the road” and cautioned that there was still no end in sight for the rolling industrial actions that had crippled Sydney’s train network in recent weeks.

“New Year’s Eve might be marked safe, but commuters aren’t – school holidays, Australia Day, return to work and even Easter will all be all under threat,” Speakman said.

The FWC hearing came after police warned of “grave concerns” for safety if 1 million people lining the harbour struggled to leave after the midnight show. Organisers say the fireworks are watched by a further 400 million people globally, and the event’s economic impact is estimated at $280m

Pub and bar operators, a casino and the NSW Labor government had planned to argue on Tuesday that train driver work bans planned for New Year’s would cause significant harm to third parties and potentially endanger life.

New Year’s Eve also doubles as the busiest day on Australia’s largest rail network, with rare all-night running shuttling people across the state. Some 3,200 services run about every five minutes throughout the day, with crunch time coming in the hour after midnight as the masses try to leave together.

Unions continue to demand four annual wage increases of 8% but the NSW premier, Chris Minns, has said that is unaffordable and could not happen while he was denying nurses a similarly costly claim.

The government had previously offered 11% across three years, including superannuation increases. Its starting offer to the rail unions for this enterprise agreement was a 9.5% pay rise over three years.

The FWC cannot be asked to settle the substantive dispute – pay and conditions – until February.