68k base might sound right but I don't know about the $113k including super. 68k might sound like a lot but that is only $1300 a week. Electricity bills can easily reach that in a quarter, gas about half that. fuel is $1.40 a litre, food can be easily $200 a week and so that $1300 a week can easily be gobbled up quickly.
Agree 68k base is below average.
As I guess the drivers nearly all get shift allowance of sorts each week then there is more plus other bits.
As I showed before, the pay compares very favorably against that of a nurse or teacher with a number of years experience and both require self funded university education.
these days you don't give arbitratory pay rises above inflation, HR looks at complexity of task, pre-training and on site training, bench mark against international and national equivalents, ease of replacement, productivity against past etc etc to determine what salary's should be and should there be changes against inflation. I'm going through all this crap at work now. Its painful but they do this to control costs and determine more a role is worth in monitory terms.
So, according to the EBA we have the following salary & allowances:
- $1351 Weekly salary for a newly-qualified driver.
- $3.80 for an afternoon shift (Start before & finish after 1800)
- $4.48 for a nightshift (1800-0359 start time)
- $3.80 for an early shift (0400-0530 start)
- OT Paid at 1.5 (is 1.7x with PN)
If you assume (I know, I know...) 30% are early, 30% are afternoon, 20 % night and 20% dayshift you can approximate the folowing gross salary, based on 4RDO's a fortnight (104/year, 261 ordinary shifts year):
261*.3=78.3 Early @ $3.80ea
261*.3=78.3 Arvo @ 3.80ea
261*.2=52.2 Night@ $4.48ea
261*.2=52.2 Days @ $0.00ea
So shift allowances add approximately $828 a year to your $70,252 salary for a total of $71K. Then add your 20% leave loading to bring you up to $85,200. To compare a Driver's salary with that of a teacher, nurse or other profession is meaningless, because it lacks relativity. For that argument put forward to be valid
HR looks at complexity of task, pre-training and on site training, bench mark against international and national equivalents, ease of replacement, productivity against past etc etc to determine what salary's should be and should there be changes against inflation
you need to compare against other driver's, both suburban and freight, not other industries - and in all cases bar one I am aware of, Sydney Trains come out as the lowest salary for a FT-employed driver. Driver's are currently doing more with less, as evidenced by the new timetable, and feel they should be rewarded for making it work - something that is not an unreasonable argument, when you consider them alongside crew from other operators.
Thanks for those figures KV
Can you advise if the ETR drivers are working to the 19 day month based on when they were awarded the 38Hour week?
The other aspect do they still have to work a minimum set number of days/hours before they can say no to overtime?
When I was on ETR and back on the diesel side, the rostering was pushed by the AFULE to also ensure duty free days were grouped together where at all possible in single blocks throughout the roster, enginemen had to give the roster clerks one of those days as an overtime day unless they had already worked 106hrs in that fortnight, thus rather than a 10 & 9 day fortnight as per the roster, they had to work 11 and 10 days.
For those who do not know, a roster contains the names of every driver on a fortnights roster line, after that fortnight he drops one line to take up the work shown on that roster, the person on the last line then goes to the top line and so on, duty free days were spread so that they would be grouped but allow for the extra day of work and for the driver to have sufficient time off.
The other aspect of the working was a shift limit on etr of under 9.00hrs with no more than 3 hours in the one cab without a break. For those who think that's a bit small, consider that many other work places allow an employee to go to the toilet at will, also those who smoked were allowed a 10 minute or similar break for a smoke, walk along most streets and you see many standing on the streets outside office doors.
A crib/meal break (10 minutes on diesel freight trains) 30minutes on round trip XPT workings and 25 ETR, including walking time from train to meal room. The only other time it was possible to have a toilet break was at Central if you were on a circle or North Sydney train, as they had stand by drivers there. You picked up your working on its return.
At Central we had several workings that included start Central and go around circle a full Bankstown Circle via Lidcombe and out to East Hills, all stations in the one cab and we got the meal break at East Hills, then took the next return service. That running some of them at night and early morning was quite draining as the only relief you had was to stand up and drive rather than just sit the whole time.
Consider also that many drivers on ETR also had at least an hour or two at each end of the shift to travel to & from work. Travel on the ETR was always free to and from work but often you had to get an earlier train and wait at Central or the depot for an hour as there were no other services to get you there on time.
The Transport minister on the news last night said that there was 125 drivers undergoing training, I wonder how many of them will still be there in 6 months time. Money is not the be all of everything and a rail worker especially enginemen in the past and still today are virtual nomads and have one if not the worst anti social job that is around.
When I started at Enfield in January 1964 there were somewhere around 30 Trainees at Loco Enfield and another 20 at Delec, by years end, over 80% had left and by the time we were appointed firemen in 65 less than 10 remained. The job was dirtier and had worse conditions, but it was a much more satisfying job if you were up to it.
Having had over 2 years on the ETR after knocking back one appointment for Hornsby owing to the need to drive from Seven Hills each way, I accepted Central in the next intake, at the end of 2 years I applied for a transfer back to the diesel section and thankfully only had to wait 3 months for that to come through, but had to re - sit safe working and other qualifications.
Would I go back if I had the chance? Absolutely not. If for no other reason my health suffered the first round and was much younger then.
PS edit in. At the time I was medically retired, my last years wage was $38k at Werris Creek and I worked one extra day a fortnight, relief on XPT round trip to Maitland and back little weekend work, especially on Sundays and that was in 19887/88. For the base salary of $68K now, its peanuts.