'Enough is enough': Longer regional rail strike confirmed on eve of Folkie

Authorised officers, customer service staff, conductors and train controllers will stop work between 3am and 4pm on Friday March 8.

The network will be at a standstill when eight out of 10 Warrnambool line trains are scheduled to run to and from Southern Cross on the eve of Port Fairy Folk Festival, Victorian Junior Life Saving Championships and the annual Volleyball Seaside Tournament.

It's a major escalation in a long-running dispute between rail operator V/Line and the Rail, Tram and Bus union over a new enterprise agreement.

The union announced its intention to strike on February 27 and confirmed on Thursday, March 7, it would go ahead.

It said the RTBU had been trying to negotiate with V/Line management since June last year, and workers had been taking industrial action since December.

The union said the disruptions could have been averted had V/Line and the government "taken regional workers seriously".

In March it claimed it received a "sub standard" offer, sparking what will be the seventh strike this year.

Branch secretary Vik Sharma claimed Victoria's public sector wages policy, which caps salary increases at three per cent, is being used to "hold back" V/Line employees.

"Regional workers and their communities deserve to be treated with respect, but instead they are being treated like second class citizens," Mr Sharma said in a statement on February 27.

"While the Allan state government continues to play puppet master, V/Line need to get serious at the bargaining table to resolve this dispute."

V/Line chief executive Matt Carrick called on the union to resolve the dispute at the bargaining table, claiming the most recent offer had "improved" benefits.

"The union's action to notify us of further strikes is disappointing and this continued action will disrupt passengers that rely on V/Line services," he said in February.

South West Coast MP Roma Britnell said the intended strike was just another challenge for passengers "who have endured so much".

"It's been going on for a very long time and the people of Warrnambool, our south-west communities, have had to endure seven years of promises of trains that haven't come and breakdowns that occur frequently," she said.

"We have a system that is vastly different to the metropolitan Melbourne system of Myki. We don't get compensated when we have breakdowns, we don't get an email when we make a booking or a text message when services are changed.

"We've had poor punctuality every month consistently for the last 12 months, we've had line upgrades which we obviously need but it's difficult to keep accepting as a community that for at least seven years we've had excuse after excuse and service disruption after service disruption."

V/Locity trains are still yet to roll into the Warrnambool train station despite being announced in July 2017, while punctuality remains below target with the network recording 78.2 per cent of trains running on time in January 2024.

The regional target is 92 per cent.

Ms Britnell said enough was enough.

"The government needs to get this fixed," she said.

"How much can the community endure? It's unreliable and (the strike) is just another added challenge, not to mention the day before the long weekend.

"A lot of people would have come up and our businesses - our hospitality and accommodation - would have benefited from a boost in the community which is why the government needs to settle this now."

Train drivers are not part of the March 8 strike.

V/Line is working to minimise impacts to passengers and will provide the latest updates online.