Sydney commuters have been told to avoid non-urgent rail travel amid delays and hundreds of service cancellations, as pay negotiations between train unions and the state government grind to a halt.

The acting state transport minister, John Graham, said the network was in the midst of a major disruption on Friday.

“We’ve had more than 350 services cancelled this morning and that is having a big impact across the network,” he told Sydney radio 2GB.

At the centre of the latest disagreement is a demand for a $4,500 bonus payment for every rail worker – a sweetener that rail unions secured when negotiating its last pay deal with the previous Coalition government.

A NSW government spokesperson said the unions had requested the bonus “at the last hour” of extensive negotiations on Thursday night.

“After extensive negotiations over the last few days the unions at the last hour asked for a $4,500 bonus payment for every rail worker. This was never part of our offer, nor was it in the union’s counteroffer,” the spokesperson said on Friday morning.

“As a result, the union has instructed drivers not to show up to work today.”

But Toby Warnes, the secretary of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union NSW (RTBU), called that claim “completely untrue”.

Warnes said the bonus payment was “an existing entitlement contained within the last enterprise agreement” struck with the previous Coalition government – and “nothing new at all”.

“Claims from the NSW government that rail workers threw an extra payment into the mix are completely untrue.”

The RTBU claimed the NSW government had not raised the bonus payment or attempted to remove it from the new deal during months of negotiations.

The government, however, insisted the bonus payment in the previous 2023 agreement was a one-off initiative – and not automatically continued into the next deal.

Warnes on Friday defended leaked communications reportedly from an RTBU convenor on Thursday night telling members “let’s fuck the network up”.

The union boss said he didn’t authorise the message or tell workers not to go to work. Warnes said members were frustrated. “You’ve got a government that’s treated [them] very poorly for the past five months,” he said.

The RTBU warned on Thursday night that trains would run 23km/hr slower than usual in areas where the speed limit was over 80km/hr, as part of protected industrial action.

Warnes told a press conference on Friday morning that delays across the network were “entirely attributable to the government issuing, last Friday, 5,000 individual lockout notices to train crew workers” across the state.

The notices were intended to take effect Wednesday, he said, and postponed by the government at midnight in efforts to reach an agreement – then took effect again overnight on Thursday “after negotiations fell over”.

“So we have workers who are either showing up today and risking not getting paid by the government, or we have workers who have chosen not to attend work today because of those lockout notices,” Warnes said.

“No one can predict the level of disruption that this is going to cause.”

The claims about a “lockout” were disputed, with the government understood to be encouraging employees to turn up to work on Friday to minimise the disruptions.

The NSW government spokesperson said “we have a fair and reasonable pay offer on the table”.

“We can’t say yes to rail unions and no to nurses.” They said the government was looking at “all our options including urgent legal action”.

Friday’s actions were the latest wave of disruptions in what has been a nine-month period in which combined rail unions and the state government have failed to agree on a new pay deal. The government has repeatedly sought to quash various work stoppages through legal interventions.

The unions’ initial demands were for a 32% pay rise over four years. The government’s most recent offer was 15% over four years – a base 13% figure plus a 1% rise from efficiency gains and 1% in superannuation.

Talks on the new enterprise agreement continue ahead of the next Fair Work Commission hearing on Monday, Transport for NSW said in a media release.

They said on Thursday that train union member drivers might operate trains at reduced speeds “however a normal train timetable will continue to operate”.

“While we expect minimal disruption, the consequences of industrial action can be unpredictable.”

– with Australian Associated Press

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