The issue
Hundreds of engineers who operate New Jersey Transit trains could walk off the job for the first time in 42 years as soon as May 16, after transit officials and labor leaders left wage negotiations without a deal on May 5 (and don’t plan to meet again ahead of the strike deadline).
For months, officials at the rail agency and the NJ Transit Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen have been locked in tense negotiations over pay raises for the roughly 500 transit workers represented by the union. But the contract talks have stalled and a potential strike threatens to upend the commutes of 350,000 daily riders — more than 70,000 of which commute between the Garden state and Manhattan. A strike would result in the full suspension of NJ Transit rail service, including the MTA’s Metro-North Railroad service traveling west of the Hudson River on the Port Jervis and Pascack Valley lines.
The labor union’s leadership has pushed to raise the average annual salary of a train engineer by more than 40%, from $135,000 to at least $190,000. NJ Transit officials meanwhile have sought a contract that would bring the average engineer’s annual wage up to $172,000. A tentative contract deal between the rail agency and union would have raised wages to that figure, but the union’s members overwhelmingly rejected that arrangement during an April 16 vote — 87% of the 427 engineers who cast a vote on the contract opposed it.
The players
Thomas Haas, the union’s general chairman representing engineers at NJ Transit, argues that the railroad’s engineers are increasingly leaving for agencies that pay more elsewhere, including the Long Island Rail Road, PATH and Amtrak. Training new workers, he said, is costly and time intensive, and NJ Transit’s funds are better spent on paying the workers it already has more to retain them and avoid a possible worker shortage.
“It costs roughly $250,000 to train an engineer, and it takes time. High churn rates are not a good way to keep a railroad running,” Haas said in a statement. “The better answer is to pay a competitive wage to help with both recruitment and retention.”
But NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said the agency has negotiated in good faith, offering to raise the average engineer’s wage to $172,000 only to have that offer rejected. A visibly frustrated Kolluri said at a Tuesday New Jersey state Assembly hearing that the union’s wage demands are at odds with the economic uncertainties the agency faces under the Trump administration, and with new tariffs that will likely raise the costs of materials and equipment for the railroad.
“If there’s any citizen, private or government, in this environment who’d get a $25,000 pay raise and say, ‘No, no, that’s not good enough,’ does that sound like a group of people who are grounded in reality, or more importantly, on what is actually happening in the world we live in?” Kolluri told the Garden State’s Assembly during the Tuesday hearing.
NJ Transit said it currently does not have an estimate on how much newly implemented tariffs may impact its bottom line. To date, the Trump administration has not moved to withdraw federal funds planned for NJ Transit; NJ Transit is set to receive $334 million, or about 10% of its total budget, in federal dollars to pay for maintenance on its systems this coming fiscal year, which begins on July 1.
The cost
The union’s demand for a 14% wage increase, said Kolluri, would cost Garden State taxpayers and NJ Transit an estimated $1.4 billion between July 2025 and June 2030.
A fact sheet posted to NJ Transit’s website says that complying with the union’s asks would require either “drastic reductions to service systemwide,” a 17% fare increase, or a 27% increase to a tax on New Jersey businesses, which the state legislature raised last year to plug a gap in the agency’s budget. NJ Transit raised fares 15% last year. For example, a one-way fare for the popular commute route of Princeton Junction in New Jersey to Penn Station in New York jumped from $16 to $18.40 under the fare increase.
Haas argued that NJ Transit’s estimates are inflated and that the contract the union wants would cost the railroad roughly $250 million.
Yeah, but…
Transit officials could still avoid a strike in the eleventh hour. NJ Transit averted its last potential strike in 2016 by inking a new union contract the day before a planned worker walkout. Transit officials and labor leaders currently are not scheduled to meet until after May 16, but labor negotiations often come down to the wire with each side waiting to see which will blink. NJ Transit workers haven’t walked off the job over contract negotiations since March 1, 1983 — a strike that took officials 34 days to resolve.
What’s next
A strike could begin as soon as 12:01 a.m. on Friday, May 16.
NJ Transit said the labor action would force a suspension of all NJ Transit rail service and also halt MTA service west of the Hudson River on Metro-North Railroad’s Port Jervis and Pascack Valley lines. Transit officials are encouraging commuters to work from home, if possible. The agency says it will bolster NJ Transit bus service into New York and contract with private coach operators to pick up passengers at four key regional stations during weekday rush hours.
Those bus journeys would prioritize trips from Secaucus Junction to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey to the bus terminal, the Hamilton Rail Station to the Newark Penn Station PATH stop, and from the Woodbridge Center Mall to the Harrison PATH station.
As of Monday, May 12, the MTA said Metro-North conductors on Hudson Line and Harlem Line trains will honor tickets from stations in Rockland County and Orange County. This will allow commuters from these counties to develop alternate travel plans to reach New York City.
