New Jersey Transit and its locomotive engineers reached an agreement on a new contract, ending a three-day transit strike that disrupted trains for thousands of riders.
NJ Transit said service will resume on Tuesday as it takes about 24 hours to get the system back up and running. The transit agency urged commuters to work from home on Monday.
“If both employers and employees tomorrow could please give us one more day of work from home, that would be a huge, huge boost,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said in a press conference on Sunday evening.
The pact ends the first railroad strike for the transit system in more than 40 years.
The rail workers had walked off early Friday morning, wreaking havoc across the busiest metropolitan area in the US. Riders were forced to find other modes of travel into New York City or to work remotely.
The Port Authority’s PATH trains were packed with people over the weekend, and lines stretched several blocks for a ferry that shuttled riders across the Hudson River. Fans of the singer Shakira battled intense traffic and surging Uber prices for two concerts at MetLife Stadium when NJ Transit suspended service to the venue.
For three days, all 12 of the system’s commuter rail lines were shuttered, though buses and light-rail service continued to operate. NJ Transit estimates that it carries about 350,000 rail passengers a day including the 70,000 who ride it into New York City.
The union had initially said in an emailed statement that trains would be running Monday, before correcting the timing of the restart to Tuesday.
The agreement follows tense negotiations between the two sides with BLET National President Mark Wallace and General Chairman Tom Haas trading barbs with New Jersey Transit CEO Kris Kolluri.
“The deal itself reflects a series of concessions that came together by way of a work rule that will eventually end up paying for the fair wage that the union has asked for,” Kolluri said on Sunday.
Wage talks
Wage negotiations had been at the center of the dispute. Rail workers have gone without a raise since 2019, and the union said it wanted parity with engineers working at other major US railroads.
“The only real issue was wages,” Haas said in the statement from the union. He noted that the deal included an hourly wage beyond the proposal that was rejected by union members last month. Details about the contract will be provided after union members review the figures, according to the statement.
The tentative agreement must still be ratified by the members of the union and approved by members of the NJ Transit Board of Directors, according to a statement from the agency.
Murphy said he has a “high degree of confidence this will sail.”
Previously, NJ Transit officials had warned that agreeing to the union’s demands could pressure the agency financially.
NJ Transit operates more than 925,000 weekday trips across its rail, bus and light-rail platforms.
In 2016, NJ Transit contract negotiations were settled hours before the strike deadline. New Jersey railroad employees’ last strike was in 1983, a stoppage that lasted more than a month.
