Sydney train drivers announce huge backflip – here’s what it means for New Year’s Eve

Commuters should get more time to spend with family and less time stuck on train platforms after a major union succumbed to pressure over work bans.

Amid concerns for Sydney’s world-famous New Year’s Eve party, the state rail union dropped eight major work bans late on Monday.

They include distance limits for drivers and various signalling bans that had forced more than 680 cancellations over the weekend.

It represents a major backdown on the eve of a legal challenge to the work bans on safety and other grounds.

The Rail Tram and Bus Union NSW cast the changes as necessary to help ward off actions to ‘effectively crush’ its bargaining strategy.

‘While it’s frustrating to have to adjust our planned actions, our ability to pivot and respond strategically is crucial in the face of these dishonest and immoral manoeuvres,’ secretary Toby Warnes told members on Monday night.

It means New Year’s Eve revellers and the businesses reliant on them no longer need to eagerly await the industrial umpire’s call on potentially crippling train delays and cancellations.

Pub and bar operators, a casino and the NSW Labor government had planned to argue on Tuesday that train driver work bans planned for New Year’s would cause significant harm to third parties and potentially endanger life.

The hearing at the Fair Work Commission comes after police warned of ‘grave concerns’ for safety if one million people lining the harbour struggled to leave after the midnight show.

Organisers say the fireworks are watched by another 400 million people globally.

Its economic impact is estimated at $280 million.

New Year’s Eve also doubles as the busiest day on Australia’s largest rail network with rare all-night running shuttling people across the state.

Some 3,200 services run about every five minutes throughout the day, with crunch time coming in the hour after midnight as the masses try to leave together.

The union and government remain poles apart after seven months of pay negotiations.

Unions continue to demand four annual wage increases of eight per cent but Premier Chris Minns says that’s unaffordable and can’t happen while he is denying nurses a similarly costly claim.

The government has offered 11 per cent across three years, including superannuation increases.

Work bans recommenced on Thursday after a court dismissed a government bid to have them made unlawful.

The saga could drag on for several more months.

The Fair Work Commission cannot be asked to settle the substantive dispute – pay and conditions – until February.