Newcastle industrial action

Newcastle bus drivers will take industrial action from Monday 20 June, following a breakdown in negotiations with Keolis Downer.

Buses will not run for 24 hours from 02:01 on Monday morning.

From 02:01 on Tuesday 21 June, there will be an indefinite ban on the logging into, and any other use of the Bus Driver Console. It is the union’s understanding that this action will not allow the Opal card readers to operate.

The company has flagged they have major concerns about drivers not operating the BDCs. This revolves around the fact that they have to provide TfNSW with the data the machines collect and TfNSW then uses that to measure KDH’s performance across a variety of things like cancelled trips, complaints per 100k passengers, etc. TANSW will fine KDH quite heavily if KDH do not provide this information. 

KDH has to give a day’s notice to take actions against members, and Monday is a stoppage, not a partial work ban so this is treated differently. We expect KDH to respond early next week to the Opal ban, so members need to consider what course of action they would take in each of the above circumstances. 

Understand, this is not designed to have anyone decide one way or another. The union will fight for as long as YOU want to. If the majority want to fight on regardless of consequence, then we will. If the majority seek a negotiated settlement at any point in time, then we will do that.