Sydney trains to shut down from Thursday to Saturday in ongoing dispute

Haylen had flagged the government was due to negotiate with the union later on Tuesday but would not comment on specifics of the discussion. Sydney Trains chief executive Matt Longland said they had been in talks with the RTBU in a bid to avoid affecting 1 million passengers in the stand-off.

“We put a proposal to the union last night so that we would be able to operate on one line. We would operate 24-hour services from Strathfield through the city to Hornsby over the weekend period, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night,” Longland said.

Haylen said it was “unsustainable” for the network to operate around-the-clock services.

“We said that some time ago now, that while we tried that last weekend and were able to run some services, it is not sustainable in the long term, not only because of that particular ban but other conflicting bans around hours available for train crew, and the ongoing hundreds of bans that are in place that are continuing to make it harder and harder to run trains,” Haylen said.

The government has urged commuters to make alternative transport arrangements, with information provided by Transport for NSW through warning signs across the train network, transport apps and information pages.

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The deadlock is the latest in a series of disputes over a pay deal for which the RTBU has negotiated with the government for the past six months. Labor has offered the 14,000 rail workers across NSW wage increases of 3.5 per cent in the first year, 3 per cent in the second and 3 per cent in the third, lower than the union’s demand for a 32 per cent pay rise over four years.

Both sides have expressed interest in settling the issue before Christmas.

“We want to resolve this by Christmas. The best way to do that is to negotiate, not to put bans in place,” Haylen said. “It’s unfortunate that they are yet to do so, and that’s why we’re warning passengers about the coming disruption.”