IT IS time the Transport Workers Union comes clean about its intentions in hearings of NSW Industrial Relations, which sets industrial practice, that the union has initiated.
When the now-defunct Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal (RSRT) handed down its order setting specific rates for truck owner drivers across the nation on April Fool’s Day this year there was outcry.
It was only then that truck owners realised their livelihoods were on the line and they mobilised to rally in Canberra to protest the rates.
The 11th hour action translated into a political outcome that mobilised conservative politicians to abolish the RSRT.
The TWU at that time maintained the order was all about safety on our roads and that legislation setting specific rates had existed in NSW for 30 years.
The union’s argument then was the NSW legislation had never sent any truck driver broke.
It argued the action of protesting truck drivers was unnecessary and driven by the political ambitions of individuals behind representative trucking associations.
Since the abolition of the RSRT, the NSW legislation and precedents of interpretation have been modified by NSW Industrial Relations. Specific orders that have for 30 years applied only to greater Sydney and local deliveries now apply to all of NSW.
The TWU will apply for more modification of the NSW legislation, but it has not made clear what modifications it wants.
The trucking industry has been left anxious and full of doubt about what is coming.
Earlier this year, to this newspaper’s correspondents, the union played down the NSW legislation’s existence as reason to accept similar national laws.
Then, once the national laws had been routed because of their consequences for small business, the union set about attempting to modify the NSW laws.
This seems cynical.
Any law that applies to trucking in NSW, when it comes to interstate movement of freight, effectively applies to any truck driver passing through our state.
Abrogation of responsibility for actions, intended or not, does not cut it and never has. If this action has commercial ramifications it should be thoroughly interrogated.
It is time the union came clean about its intentions so all parties can weigh the potential outcomes of any modification to laws that have so far served NSW well.
