Speaker 1: Already and this is the daily This is the Daily
Speaker 1: ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday,
Speaker 2: the twenty second of November.
Speaker 1: I'm Zara, I'm Nandini.
Speaker 3: Around a million Sydney siders, myself included. We're preparing for
Speaker 3: major disruptions today after the Rail, Tram and Bus Union
Speaker 3: or the RTBU, announced train workers were going on strike
Speaker 3: until Sunday morning.
Speaker 1: Businesses, schools and.
Speaker 3: Communities across Sydney and New South Wales had made contingency
Speaker 3: plans to prepare for a shutdown of train services. However,
Speaker 3: the union has now reached an agreement with the state
Speaker 3: government after multiple rounds of negotiations.
Speaker 2: Nandini, I want to go back to tda's routes this morning,
Speaker 2: and tda's routes are to step back from a story
Speaker 2: or from a head deadline and just explain a bit
Speaker 2: more of the terms the context that people need to know.
Speaker 2: And this is one of those stories where I really
Speaker 2: want to do that because we talk about strikes and
Speaker 2: industrial actions so often. You know, I would have run
Speaker 2: out of fingers counting the number of times that we
Speaker 2: have spoken about it on this pod. But I don't
Speaker 2: know that we've ever spent the time actually exploring what
Speaker 2: a strike is and why it happens in the first place.
Speaker 2: So that's what I really want to get into today.
Speaker 2: I want to start really really basic with you here.
Speaker 2: Can we strip it all back and just start with
Speaker 2: why do strikes happen in the first place.
Speaker 3: The most common reason we have a strike occur is
Speaker 3: pay disputes. So workers or the union that represents workers,
Speaker 3: we'll go in to unions in a moment.
Speaker 2: Okay, put a pin in that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they will often call for better wages or
Speaker 3: working conditions. Depending on the sector, workers might strike for
Speaker 3: better overtime pay or to have more say on when
Speaker 3: they're shifted to work and maybe that could help them
Speaker 3: bounce that with personal life.
Speaker 1: This is something we've seen in nurse Put another pin
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: So essentially they are requesting more, whether that be pay
Speaker 2: or rites or whatever. It is. Like, there is a
Speaker 2: request there from the employees to the employer. But you
Speaker 2: said there that they can go on strike for these things.
Speaker 2: When someone says go on strike, like, what does that
Speaker 2: actually mean?
Speaker 3: So we'll often hear strikes being called industrial action as well.
Speaker 3: Day to day will notice a strike happen because people
Speaker 3: walk off the job, they don't show up to work,
Speaker 3: and that could involve train worker is not showing up
Speaker 3: to the train stations so trains aren't running.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's like a really clear obvious example of
Speaker 2: a strike.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And when that strike is occurring, workers often are instead
Speaker 3: protesting or rallying or showing up to demonstrations to renew
Speaker 3: their calls to the government or to their employer.
Speaker 2: But that's only one version of a strike, right, Like
Speaker 2: there can be other forms of industrial action. What are they?
Speaker 3: It can include really simple things like workers wearing campaign
Speaker 3: shirts or wearing badges around their workplace with a particular slogan.
Speaker 3: For instance, with nurses and midwives in New South Wales,
Speaker 3: they had a campaign that they called value Us and
Speaker 3: it's something that they're trying to campaign about. I'm going
Speaker 3: to use the Rail, train and Bus union as an
Speaker 3: example because this is one that we've been talking about
Speaker 3: all week and we've been seeing in the news and
Speaker 3: they've been taking industrial action for months. And this could
Speaker 3: even include things like boundaries. They did this thing where
Speaker 3: they would have to leave at least thirty seconds between
Speaker 3: every phone call to create delays, or even running a
Speaker 3: train every second service, meaning that you have to wait
Speaker 3: longer between your trains. You might have noticed some train
Speaker 3: workers wearing shirts around stations. You might not have, but
Speaker 3: these strikes that are complete work stoppages are the ones
Speaker 3: that we really take notice of you as an average person.
Speaker 2: Okay, So they're going out there and they're asking for
Speaker 2: changes to be made for workers in whatever specific industry
Speaker 2: we're talking about. One of the things, and it might
Speaker 2: be a silly question, but one of the things that
Speaker 2: comes up when I read these stories is what happens
Speaker 2: to an employee who or a worker who walks off
Speaker 2: the job and who you know doesn't show up to work.
Speaker 2: What happens to those people? Do they get in trouble
Speaker 2: at work?
Speaker 3: Well, firstly, I wanted to say there are no silly questions.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Andthony, you can buy our book No Silly
Speaker 2: Questions available today.
Speaker 3: But this is where unions come into play. So you've
Speaker 3: probably heard of a bunch of different unions in the news.
Speaker 3: We've mentioned the RTBU today.
Speaker 2: Can you just pause there? What is a union?
Speaker 3: So a union is a body that represents workers. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's often their voice it's like the middleman that talks
Speaker 3: between the employees and the employer to advocate for better
Speaker 3: working rights conditions or whatever they're asking for.
Speaker 2: And so if we use media as an example, that
Speaker 2: MEAA is the Media Industries union, but there's a different
Speaker 2: one for all sorts of industries.
Speaker 3: Right, every industry has their own union. So strikes are
Speaker 3: organized by the union, and the workers who take part
Speaker 3: in strikes are union members. Being a union member usually
Speaker 3: involves paying a membership fee. It could be weekly, monthly, annually,
Speaker 3: depending on the union. And the idea is that the
Speaker 3: union protects you and allows.
Speaker 1: You to go on strike.
Speaker 3: So you get certain protections by being a union member.
Speaker 3: So let's see's an example of you and Azara.
Speaker 1: Let's say we're both nurses. We're not.
Speaker 3: For this example, we are and Zara, you're a union
Speaker 3: member and I'm not, and the Nurses and Midwives Association,
Speaker 3: which is our union, they're going on strike. You could
Speaker 3: go on strike and be protected by it, but because
Speaker 3: I'm not a union member, there is an expectation for
Speaker 3: me to still be at work.
Speaker 2: Okay, I understand. So the people who are going on
Speaker 2: strike are part of a union and therefore their employer
Speaker 2: can't come down on them for not being at work
Speaker 2: versus someone who's not part of a union, and that
Speaker 2: would be a very different response.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with the deep dive after this quick
Speaker 2: note from our sponsor. You refer to the union there
Speaker 2: as almost the middleman. Can you just go into that
Speaker 2: a bit further, the middleman between who and why.
Speaker 3: So we're going to be talking a lot about the
Speaker 3: public sector today, but I want to note that unions
Speaker 3: exist also in the private sector. So for instance, Coles
Speaker 3: and Woowarts they have a retail and fast food workers union.
Speaker 3: But we're going to be touching a lot on government
Speaker 3: or public jobs. So the union being the middleman, represents
Speaker 3: the workers or employees. That's your nurses, your police officers,
Speaker 3: your teachers. And then on the other side is the
Speaker 3: government or if we're not in the public sector, it
Speaker 3: would be the holes or.
Speaker 2: Will work, so the employer and so the government is
Speaker 2: involved because they are the ones that are setting the wages,
Speaker 2: for example, for the public sector.
Speaker 3: Exactly, I'm going to use an example to make this
Speaker 3: make sense.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, We're.
Speaker 3: Going to look at the New South Wales nurses and
Speaker 3: midwives Association because they've been striking for months now and
Speaker 3: it really took off after over in Victoria, nurses and
Speaker 3: midwives got a pay rise of twenty eight percent over
Speaker 3: four years. Now when it comes to the New South
Speaker 3: Wales nurses and midwives, they've been asking the state government
Speaker 3: for a fifteen percent pay increase alongside other working conditions
Speaker 3: and overtime rights. But the main thing we're looking at
Speaker 3: here is the pay increase. So then what happens is
Speaker 3: as a back and forth between the state government and
Speaker 3: the union representatives that represent the workers. This is where
Speaker 3: they're trying to negotiate an agreement in terms of the
Speaker 3: best pay outcome that the government is happy with and
Speaker 3: that the union and the workers are. So the New
Speaker 3: South Wales government came back with an offer of ten
Speaker 3: point five percent over a three year period.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's not what they had asked for.
Speaker 3: No, they asked for fifteen percent. So the union takes
Speaker 3: this government offer back to their members and consults with them.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it gets put to a vote, other times it
Speaker 3: might be really clear that they don't want to agree
Speaker 3: with the government, and in the case of the New
Speaker 3: South Wales nurses and midwives they did not reach an
Speaker 3: agreement and that is when they took further strike action.
Speaker 2: Okay, understood, So that's still a live I guess negotiation.
Speaker 2: There hasn't been a conclusion that's been reached, or at
Speaker 2: least not one that either side is happy with. Do
Speaker 2: we have any recent examples when negotiations were successful, just
Speaker 2: I guess to prove the point of how this can
Speaker 2: turn out a bit differently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So just this month, New South Wales police were
Speaker 3: offered a pay rise of up to thirty nine percent
Speaker 3: over a four year period from the New South Wales government. Now,
Speaker 3: mind you, not all officers received the thirty nine percent.
Speaker 3: It sort of depends on where in the ranks they
Speaker 3: stand and how long they've been serving in the force.
Speaker 3: They were also offered a couple other bonuses, such as
Speaker 3: retention payments, to encourage police officers to stay in the
Speaker 3: force for longer. When the government made this offer, the
Speaker 3: president of the police union basically made a video announcement
Speaker 3: explaining what the offer that the government provided, and it
Speaker 3: also said that it endorsed this offer. It advised its
Speaker 3: union members that they think this is a good offer,
Speaker 3: and they basically said that we think it's the best
Speaker 3: we can get yep. And that offer from the government
Speaker 3: then gets put to a vote to its union members
Speaker 3: on whether or not they want to agree.
Speaker 2: Okay, and in that situation it was agreed too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And of course with the New South Wales Rail, Tram
Speaker 3: and Bus union it's now also been successful. The looming
Speaker 3: threat of no train services for over two days across
Speaker 3: New South Wales has been just enough for the state
Speaker 3: government to reach an agreement with the union YEP. Currently
Speaker 3: the understanding is that strikes have been postponed and.
Speaker 2: Do we have any idea what's been agreed to in
Speaker 2: order to I guess postpone those strikes and that shutdown
Speaker 2: of the rail system.
Speaker 1: So for this we need a little bit of context.
Speaker 3: The Rail, Train and Bus union has been calling for
Speaker 3: twenty four hour train services over weekends. Now this is
Speaker 3: pretty unusual because workers often strike.
Speaker 1: When they want to work less.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but in this case they're actually advocating for twenty
Speaker 3: four hour services over the weekend. Initially, the state's transport minister,
Speaker 3: that's Joe Halen, said that twenty four hour train services
Speaker 3: would eventually lead to the failure of our rail network. However,
Speaker 3: now that New South Wales Premier Chris Mins has agreed
Speaker 3: to let trains run for twenty four hours over the weekend.
Speaker 1: The strikes have been postponed.
Speaker 2: So people listening this morning will be able to catch
Speaker 2: a train as normal and as.
Speaker 1: Planned exactly, and also over Saturday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's important to note that these strikes haven't
Speaker 3: been outright canceled. It's not completely off the table because
Speaker 3: there are still details that the union and the government
Speaker 3: need to iron out, and so if another disagreement does
Speaker 3: come up and negotiations fail, we could see another potential strike.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting and I think one of those examples
Speaker 2: we're just stepping back and trying to understand a bit
Speaker 2: of the jargon that sits behind the story is actually
Speaker 2: really helpful, and I know it will help me when
Speaker 2: I'm reading stories about other strikes, because as you said,
Speaker 2: there are so many that are still live that haven't
Speaker 2: been resolved yet. So thank you for that, Mandini, you're worried,
Speaker 2: and thank you for joining us for another week of
Speaker 2: the Daily OS that wraps up up a big week
Speaker 2: of news. We will be back again this afternoon with
Speaker 2: your day's headlines, but until then, have a great day.
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