Victoria hit by strikes as Premier ducks issues

A powerful article in today’s The Australian on what is at stake in the current rail strikes – militant union officials trying to keep archaic work practices that stand in the way of key improvements to Melbourne’s train services.

To make matters worse, as Judith Sloane writes, this is under a State Labor government that has scrapped Victoria’s construction industry code, repealed move-on laws, given a big pay rise to paramedics, sacked the ambulance board, moved to lock nurse-patient ratios into legislation and is increasing public service numbers rapidly.

No wonder rail union officials think they only need to throw their weight around to get what they want.

Premier Andrews needs to stop ducking the issue. He needs to make clear publicly to his socialist left union allies that they must drop their outrageous demands and negotiate a fair and reasonable pay rise in exchange for sensible work practice changes.