NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Transit’s train engineers reached a tentative agreement Sunday to conclude their three-day strike that had disrupted service for approximately 100,000 daily passengers, affecting routes to Newark airport and across the Hudson River to New York City. The union announced that its members would return to work on Monday, allowing trains to follow their usual schedules.
The strike, which began on Friday, marked the state’s first transit strike in over four decades, compelling individuals who typically depend on New Jersey Transit to opt for buses, cars, taxis, and boats or to stay home. The primary issue was finding a way to implement a wage increase for the engineers without triggering a financially harmful domino effect for the transit agency.
In an email statement, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen mentioned that the terms of the agreement would be distributed to the union’s 450 members employed as locomotive engineers or trainees at the passenger railroad.
“While I won’t get into the exact details of the deal reached, I will say that the only real issue was wages and we were able to reach an agreement that boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month and beyond where we were when NJ Transit’s managers walked away from the table Thursday evening,” said Tom Haas, the union’s general chairman at NJ Transit.
He added that the union was able to show management “ways to boost engineers’ wages … without causing any significant budget issue or requiring a fare increase.”
- New Jersey Transit train engineers reach tentative deal to end strike that halted NYC routes
The statement said the deal would be submitted for a ratification vote by the national union and also require a vote of the New Jersey Transit board at its next regularly scheduled meeting on June 11.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri planned a Sunday evening news conference.
A month earlier, members of the union had overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management.
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 halted 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.
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Mark Wallace, the union’s national president, had said NJ Transit needs to pay engineers a wage that’s comparable to Amtrak and Long Island Railroad because some are leaving for jobs on those other railroads for better pay.
The union had said its members have been earning an average salary of $113,000 a year and it wanted to see an agreement for an average salary of $170,000.
NJ Transit leadership, though, disputed the union’s data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000.
