This morning the LNP Government is yet again blaming unions as the transport minister announced Queensland Rail will move to a Saturday timetable as of Tuesday next week allegedly due to the ETU's protected industrial action.
What they conveniently left out is that Queensland Rail this morning wrote to our members informing them that Queensland Rail will refuse to accept any of their duties and refuse to pay them any wages. For all intents and purposes, effectively a lock out of ETU members.
The LNP Government claim that keeping trains running is the main focus they have, yet instead of allowing our members to come to work and perform some work, they have elected to push our membership out of the workplace and have all maintenance scream to halt. The move to a Saturday timetable as of Tuesday next week is directly caused by Queensland Rail's notice to members, not by the far less significant actions of our members.
If it were not obvious early, it should be now. The LNP Government and Queensland Rail are using the public and train services as a pawn in their ridiculous political campaign.
This is unacceptable, and a waste of taxpayer funds.
For the last 4 weeks the ETU has had a zero-cost solution for the government; to offer an Electrical Workers Enterprise Agreement and we will lift our action immediately and our members will be back working whilst we sit down and negotiate.
The LNP and Queensland Rail continue to refuse to take us up on this proposal, costing taxpayers, impacting Queensland Rails services as our members continue to participate in our partial bans.
We once again, call on Queensland Rail and the LNP Government to stop using the public and this Queensland public service as a play toy and start negotiating an Electrical Workers Agreement.
Our members as always remain committed to public safety and supporting services.
