Remember last week’s Sydney Trains chaos? Well, strap in, because there’s likely to be more on the way — train workers are planning to go on strike for 24 hours, stopping all work to protest the government’s failure to provide fair pay and working conditions.

The strike will start at 12.01am on Monday, January 29th, and continue until midnight the next day, meaning the entire train network will be severely understaffed for that entire day. Workers had initially planned to stop short of a strike and just protest by wearing union badges and refusing to take overtime shifts, but the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) said today that workers now had no other choice.

“We’re disappointed it’s had to come to this, but management and the NSW Government haven’t left us with any other options,” RTBU NSW Secretary Alex Claassens said.

“Workers are being stretched to capacity trying to deliver the shambolic new timetable, and now on top of this they’re all being told they can’t be guaranteed fair conditions and pay.”

Argh, Who Can I Get Angry At?

As frustrating as this is going to be for commuters, please don’t take your anger out on transport workers.

While NSW Transport Minister Andrew Constance took to a press conference today to blame striking workers for planning to “bring the city to a grinding halt and disrupt millions of passenger trips”, strikes like this are protected under law in Australia as a way for workers to wield some power when they negotiate with their employers. In short, they’re totally allowed to do this, and they have good reasons to do so.

In addition to pushing for a pay increase, transport workers have been voicing their concerns about pressure to work excessive overtime shifts in order to meet consumer demand and adapt to a new timetable introduced just weeks ago. Sydney Trains has been criticised for flaws in that timetable, as well as apparently failing to hire enough staff to cope with growing demand for public transport in recent years.

In short, as the RTBU put it, “there’s never an ideal time to take this kind of action, but the reality is, we have to.”

They also pointed out that Constance and Sydney Trains have it in their power to stop the the strike, “simply by coming back to the negotiating table with a fair agreement”.

If by some miracle that happens before January 29th, there’ll be no need for anything to go off the rails. Still, we’d recommend planning to avoid public transport on that day.

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— The T2 Commuter ? (@T2commuter) 11 January 2018