NJ Transit strike ends after shutting down New Jersey trains for weekend, union says
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said Sunday night that after two days of post-strike negotiations they'd reached a deal and 'will return to work and trains will begin running on their regular schedules Monday."
The union, known as BLET, was seeking pay comparable to the wages made by engineers at other nearby railroads, including Long Island Rail Road. NJ Transit, which has long had shaky finances, was trying to avoid blowing a hole in its own budget.
BLET's general chairman for the NJ Transit union said the union was 'able to show management ways to boost engineers' wages that will help NJT with retention and recruitment, without causing any significant budget issue or requiring a fare increase.'
Gov. Phil Murphy and NJ Transit CEO are expected to brief the media on Sunday night.
The terms of the agreement were not immediately available, largely because the union's rank and file still need to review and vote on them. In April, BLET's members overwhelmingly rejected a March deal, setting up the strike that began Friday.
The new deal was reached with the help of the National Mediation Board, which called both sides back to the table on Sunday. But even before that, the national head of BLET, Mark Wallace, called NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri on Friday night to restart talks on Saturday.
The strike that began 12:01 a.m. Friday came at a relatively lucky time for the Murphy administration. Fridays are the lightest ridership day and service is expected to resume in time for the Monday rush hour.
The last strike to idle trains came in 1983, as NJ Transit was being born as a statewide transit agency. It lasted more than a month. So the quick end is likely to contain the political fallout.
One political feature of the strike was how little anyone in Washington seemed to care that one of the nation's largest railroads was going to shut down, idling the trains that carry 100,00 people a day.
In 2022, Congress rushed to intervene in a freight rail strike, like it has on several other occasions to delay or prevent disruptions.
Wallace praised Congress for staying out of it.
'This should be a lesson for other railroad disputes,' he said in a statement. 'Nothing would have been gained by kicking the can down the road. Allowing strikes to happen encourages settlement rather than stonewalling.'
While members of New Jersey's congressional delegation urged both sides back to the table, none of them took to the floor to discuss the issue in recent days, according to a search of the Congressional Record, and no one introduced legislation to avert the strike.
Instead, they largely issued blameless statements.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat running for governor, posted a video of himself on Saturday sitting at a folding table and chairs outside a train station in Bergen County 'until everyone comes to the table to get the trains moving.'
The negotiations, which happened on Saturday and wrapped up Sunday, were happening in another county.
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