I can’t say that I agree with there having been a ‘huge ground swell of public support’.

One thing that did seem to me was that a lot of passengers had to evolve other means of transport over the five weeks, and never came back.

I often did the last West Preston to St Kilda Beach on the route 10. We used to have a regular passenger who joined us at the West Preston terminus and waited for our departure. We never saw him again afterwards.

I believe that this dispute also commenced the mass civil disobedience of fare evasion which essentially continues to this day and has been passed on to following generations.

Towards the end, too many conductors had become lazy and essentially did not bother with collecting fares once the corridor had become the slightest bit loaded with standees.

Regards,

On 17 Mar 2019, at 10:07 am, Tram Gunzle tramgunzle@...> wrote:

What really infuriated me was that after five weeks of the dispute, the Union just 'rolled-over', and totally conceded to the Government. At that stage, and with a huge 'ground swell' of public support, the AT&MOEA could have made demands (as did the ETU !); implementation of One Person Operation was a given (considering both Labor and Liberal were determined to push it through) - Secretary Luigi could have negotiated for the retention of conductors during peak hours at the very least. Unfortunately, it all came to nothing, and after the many weeks of sacrifices and petitioning made by tram crews, they were left with less - in fact, nothing of what was achievable. 😢

Dean Filgate.