New Jersey Transit train engineers went on strike just after midnight, walking off the job and leaving hundreds of thousands of daily riders in the lurch for Friday's commutes and beyond.
NJ Transit said that all rail service had been suspended "due to a labor action," adding that any non-essential travel should be avoided and anyone with the ability to work remotely should do so. The strike leaves 350,000 daily commuters in New Jersey and New York City who rely on the trains seeking other modes of transportation to reach their destinations — or consider staying home.
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WATCH HERE"The locomotive engineers of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLET) have voted to strike, which means the complete suspension of NJ TRANSIT rail service, including Metro-North west of Hudson service," NJ Transit stated on its website, noting that service on Metro-North's Port Jervis and Pascack Valley lines would be halted as well.
The walkout comes after the latest round of negotiations on Thursday didn’t produce an agreement. It will be the state’s first transit strike in more than 40 years and comes a month after union members overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management.
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SIGN UP “We presented them the last proposal; they rejected it and walked away with two hours left on the clock," said Tom Haas, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
The union said the union's 450 members and trainees have gone without a raise for five years.
"NJ Transit has a half-billion dollars for a swanky new headquarters and $53 million for decorating the interior of that unnecessary building. They gave away $20 million in revenue during a fare holiday last year. They have money for penthouse views and pet projects, just not for their front-line workers," said BLET National President Mark Wallace. "Enough is enough. We will stay out until our members receive the fair pay that they deserve."
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NJ Transit President and CEO Kris Kolluri described the situation as a “pause in the conversations.”
“I certainly expect to pick back up these conversations as soon as possible,” he said late Thursday during a joint news conference with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “If they’re willing to meet tonight, I’ll meet them again tonight. If they want to meet tomorrow morning, I’ll do it again. Because I think this is an imminently workable problem. The question is, do they have the willingness to come to a solution.”
Murphy said it was important to “reach a final deal that is both fair to employees and at the same time affordable to New Jersey’s commuters and taxpayers.”
"Again, we cannot ignore the agency’s fiscal realities,” Murphy said.
The governor and Kolluri were scheduled to address the media regarding the strike again at 10 a.m. Friday.
The announcement came after 15 hours of non-stop contract talks, according to the union. Wallace said the union "made concessions that would have gave New Jersey Transit a path to make an agreement with the local engineers and prevent a work stoppage," but said the transit giant walked away with two hours to go before the midnight deadline.
Picket lines are expected to start at 4 a.m. Friday at three locations: NJ Transit headquarters in Newark; Penn Station in New York City; and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal.
NJ Transit — the nation’s third-largest transit system — operates buses and rail in the state, providing nearly 1 million weekday trips, including into New York City. The walkout will halt all NJ Transit commuter trains, which provide heavily used public transit routes between New York City’s Penn Station on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other, as well as the Newark airport, which has grappled with unrelated delays of its own recently.
The agency had announced contingency plans in recent days, saying it planned to increase bus service, but that the buses would only add “very limited” capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and would not start running until Monday. The agency also will contract with private carriers to operate bus service from key regional park-and-ride locations during weekday peak periods.
However, the agency noted that the buses would not be able to handle close to the same number of passengers — only about 20% of current rail customers — so it urged people who could work from home to do so if there was a strike.
Even the threat of it had already caused travel disruptions. Amid the uncertainty, the transit agency Thursday and Friday at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
The parties had met Monday with a federal mediation board in Washington to discuss the matter, and a mediator was present during Thursday’s talks. Kolluri said Thursday night that the mediation board has suggested a Sunday morning meeting to resume talks.
Wages have been the main sticking point of the negotiations between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. The union says its members earn an average salary of $113,000 a year and says an agreement could be reached if agency CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average yearly salary of $170,000.
NJ Transit leadership, though, disputes the union’s data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000.
Kolluri and Murphy said Thursday night that the problem isn’t so much whether both sides can agree to a wage increase, but whether they can do so under terms that wouldn’t then trigger other unions to demand similar increases and create a financially unfeasible situation for NJ Transit.
Congress has the power to intervene and block the strike and force the union to accept a deal, but lawmakers have not shown a willingness to do that this time like they did in 2022 to prevent a national freight railroad strike.
The union has seen steady attrition in its ranks at NJ Transit as more of its members leave to take better-paying jobs at other railroads. The number of NJ Transit engineers has shrunk from 500 several months ago to about 450 today.
Associated Press reporters Hallie Golden and Josh Funk contributed to this report.
