What if the government and QR won’t negotiate reasonably?
To you it might be a stupid little tantrum. To them it might be their livelihoods and adequate compensation for their critical role in keeping society functioning.
Fundamentally, all negotiations, whether in the workplace or not, are a matter of leverage. Much like with police officers, teachers and nurses, if a job is critical to society functioning, they have some level of leverage, and for this reason the government should be willing to negotiate fairly and avoid strikes.
So I’d argue the unions you mentioned are the only ones actually doing their jobs properly. The other unions for critical workers, particularly the Nurses and Midwives Union, are not getting a level of pay for their members that reflects their importance to society, partly because they aren’t willing to engage in strikes.
This reminds me a little of the people who say they are fine with protests so long as they cause no inconvenience and don’t disturb the peace. Or in other words, they are fine with protests that can be easily ignored. This of course defeats the entire purpose of protests, which is to ensure that those around them can’t ignore the message.
Strikes are similar to protests in this way. The whole point is that they cause some level of disruption, to show that these workers fulfil important roles and should be paid better to reflect that importance. That way, those who depend on those workers in some way can’t ignore their importance to the functioning of their lives. Wanting the strikes to only happen in times that are more convenient for commuters, allows commuters to continue to ignore how much their lives depend on these workers and take them for granted.
And this is all before getting to the point @Axilya raised, that on Wednesday the controllers were willing to let the passenger trains enter the network but not freight trains, however QR wouldn’t accept this and demanded they did all or nothing. So they chose nothing. QR created that problem.
Just left Bethania southbound, and the train is very full, again. Seems like people are just dealing with the pain of bustitution and slow, all-stops services.
TL/QR really need to do better. Either double the number of services, or have Beenleigh-Banoon expresses. The claim there’s not capacity to turn 4 tph at Banoon is rubbish, because they manage it on weekdays.
Btw, to add to this morning’s fun, rail replacement bus drivers are now supplied with a device that gives them directions. The problem is, it doesn’t work in tunnels, so the driver of the first R583 got rather lost and took the wrong exit from Airport Link. A helpful passenger guided him to Eagle Junction station.
Gps tends to be unreliable in tunnels so its a fault of operators for failture to study routes beforehand to memorize any that are tunnels Or known gps impacted areas.
The Clem Jones Tunnel and Airport Link tunnel definitely have leaky wires installed since I can still receive cellular service when catching the 77 and 310. The GPS console they have must not use cellular I guess.
The airport link at Kedron often distorts my gps when going in so had to wait til other end to stabilize. Same for other directions as i frrequently play games like pogo on my communtes.
Cleveland getting a taste of the future Ferny-Cleveland arrangement this morning with timetabled services arriving five minutes later than when they’re Shornecliffe bound
What I do find utterly offensive about this type of closure is that because of the simplified stopping pattern, there shouldn’t be an excuse to run trains every 15 minutes in off-peak, or send the peak 5tph in both directions.
But the powers that be haven’t realised that, and as such stations still get 2tph in off-peak with the rest of trains running empty in counterpeak, even though it could easily be the opposite.
Where are they keeping all the NGRs during the closures, I’ve only seen SMU/IMUs at Roma Street and nothing can get between Eagle Junction and Bowen Hills. Assuming theres NGRs on the Northside. Unsure what’s serving the Gold Coast line
