New Jersey Transit Engineers Strike, Halting the Nation’s Third-Largest Commuter Rail
The union is citing unfair wages even as the agency is spending a fortune for a new headquarters.
New Jersey Transit engineers walked off the job as Friday began, affecting thousands of residents about to embark on their morning rush-hour commutes.
The cancellations on the nation’s third-largest commuter rail are expected to affect nearly 100,000 daily commuters and businesses across the New York metropolitan area. The work stoppage was launched after last-minute salary negotiations late Thursday night between NJT and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen went off the rails.
“NJ Transit has a half-billion dollars for a swanky new headquarters and $53 million for decorating the interior of that unnecessary building,” BLET’s national president, Mark Wallace, said in a statement. “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. Enough is enough. We will stay out until our members receive the fair pay that they deserve.”
A previous deal that would have given engineers their first raise in six years, along with thousands of dollars in back pay, had been rejected by nearly 90 percent of the BLET’s 500 members. The union alleges that the new pay hike would still fall short of the wages paid to engineers at other regional rail companies like Amtrak, Metro North, and SEPTA — all of which operate in the same stations as NJT, according to CNN.
“We, the locomotive engineers of NJ Transit are asking only for a fair and competitive wage,” the general chairman of the BLET, Thomas Haas, said in remarks Wednesday night during a NJT board meeting.
“The last thing we want to see is that [service] to be interrupted. But we’re at the end of our rope.”
The union says it keeps losing members who are leaving NJT to work for other rail services. Replacing them is a costly affair, since two years of training for each new hire costs $250,000.
Governor Murphy warned residents in the Garden State to limit their travel plans to avoid commuter chaos.
“If you can work from home, certainly [Friday] … would be a really good day to do so,” he said at a press conference, after talks had stalled, adding that while engineers are the backbone of the states transit system, “the workers and families who rely on our transit system every single day are the backbone of our entire economy.”
