Rail services to suffer as hundreds of jobs to go at Sydney Trains

Services and reliability are set to suffer as Sydney Trains will cut up to 300 positions before the end of the year.

Rail, Tram and Bus Union Secretary Alex Claassens said that Sydney Trains are hiding the real impact of these cuts.

“This is Sydney Trains conducting a fire sale of hundreds of jobs which will hurt customers and the network, just to make the bottom line look better,” Mr Claassens said.

“Sydney Trains has said that the job losses will not affect frontline staff or services, but when so many positions are removed it is ignorant to think that it won’t affect the day to day running of services.

Jobs will go across the organisation, with engineers and technical staff as well as administrative staff that assist with rostering and logistics to be cut.

Mr Claassens said rail infrastructure and the network itself was at risk from these cuts.

“With fewer engineers and technical specialists overseeing the network, we are likely to see more failures and more delays,” Mr Claassens said.

The RTBU will oppose these cuts they say are about trying to fix a budget problem, not about doing better business.

“Sydney Trains management are trying to save money at the expense of network reliability and safety on our stations, and all passengers will feel the brunt of these cuts,” Mr Claassens said.