NEW YORK — The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union officials announced they had signed a tentative agreement with New Jersey Transit May 18, the country’s third largest commuter railroad, ending a three-day strike that impacted some 350,000 passengers in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
The deal, which includes higher wages than the proposal rejected by the union’s members in April, would cover some 450 engineers dating back to when their contract expired in July 2020, through June 2028. A ratification vote is set for June 11.
Winning a long overdue wage increase was the union’s central demand. The workers have been fighting for a new contract for five years and haven’t had a raise since 2019. They currently make at least $10 an hour less than engineers on other railroads in the area they share train platforms with.
The rail workers faced years of mandatory federal mediation, intervention by the Joseph Biden administration, “cooling off” periods and other red tape under the notorious anti-union Railway Labor Act. The union said the strike became unavoidable after New Jersey Transit officials walked away from negotiations May 15.
Claiming to speak for the passengers, the company, backed by New Jersey Gov. Philip Murphy and the pro-boss press, attempted to whip up sentiment against the rail workers.
“It is unfortunate that locomotive engineers have opted to disrupt the lives of 350,000 NJ Transit riders rather than continue working through ongoing negotiations,” said Murphy in a press release. Further disparaging the union, he told the New York Times, “It is frankly a mess of their own making and it is a slap in the face of every commuter and worker who relies on NJ Transit.”
Instead of buckling to the “political terror of transit strikes,” wrote Nicole Gelinas in a May 17 Times column, the governor should promote car-pooling, biking and the ability workers discovered during the pandemic to work from home.
Gelinas attacked the very idea of workers’ right to strike, claiming, “Two sides can’t negotiate fairly if one side can hold the other hostage.”
The Wall Street Journal wrote in a May 17 editorial, “The transit strike shows what happens when government unions are allowed to extort the public.”
These efforts largely fell flat. Living in one of the least affordable areas in the U.S., with skyrocketing rents and grocery bills, when working people here learned New Jersey Transit rail workers were the lowest paid engineers working for a major commuter railroad in the nation, they supported their strike.
Workers buying coffee at a bakery here told this correspondent they were appalled that these rail workers hadn’t had a raise since 2019. One said that NJ Transit pointed to the high inflation when they jacked up ticket prices last year. Pickets outside Penn Station here told the Militant people had brought them pizzas, doughnuts and bottles of water to express their solidarity.