PTUA calls for Auckland Transport to take control over maintenance worker lockout

The Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) is calling for Auckland Transport to step in over the suspension of railroad workers involved in an employment dispute.

Construccones y Auxilliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF), a Spanish company which maintains the passenger trains for Auckland Metro, suspended their workers on Monday ahead of a planned strike said their union.

CAF locked out all train maintenance staff for 30 days over their requests for a pay rise to meet the rates offered to KiwiRail maintenance staff.

Jon Reeves, National Coordinator of PTUA said: “AT should show it has control of the situation and not put hundreds of daily passenger train services in jeopardy, or worse, have potentially unsafe passenger trains operating on the network.”

Trains sizes will be reduced or cancelled if they develop any technical or safety issues during this period.

PTUA said this would likely result in overloaded trains, up to “crush capacity” which they said is a serious passenger safety issue.

Auckland Transport Spokesperson Mark Hannan said, legally, AT cannot get involved in the dispute between employees and the company they have a contract with.

“It would be totally inappropriate for AT to get involved.”

PTUA further called for a top-down review as they said the fractionalized public transport system is poof.

“Most Aucklanders agree AT is a mess and needs a complete revamp as soon as possible and potentially with Government intervention,” said Mr Reeves.