New Jersey Transit rail service is on the brink of a shutdown as its train engineers prepare to strike as soon as Friday, potentially stranding riders from Wall Street bankers to fans of Shakira.
Negotiations between the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and agency officials were held Thursday morning in Newark and are expected to continue throughout the day, with assistance from a mediator from the National Mediation Board, according to a union spokesperson. If a strike is declared, engineers will be on picket lines starting at 4 a.m. New York time Friday, the spokesperson said.
The agency and union are at odds over a wage agreement, portending what could be the first New Jersey rail strike in over 40 years. NJ Transit, which operates more than 925,000 weekday trips across its system, has been urging commuters to work remotely.
The advisory to work from home conflicts with return-to-office mandates across New York City. JPMorgan Chase & Co told all of its employees to return to the office five days a week earlier this year. Citigroup Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc. have also enforced similar policies since the pandemic eased.
But health-care workers, teachers and other employees who need to be on-site for work will likely scramble to find other modes of transportation. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan warned patients of the possible strike, telling them to plan for extra travel time, check for alternate routes or reschedule appointments.
Governor Phil Murphy said that “all options are on the table,” including declaring a state of emergency if the strike does kick off.
“I’m still hoping that we find some resolution here, but we are preparing for the worst,” he said at an unrelated event on Wednesday.
NJ Transit said it won’t be operating train or bus service to MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands for the Shakira concerts on Thursday and Friday due to the work stoppage, according to a post on X. Beyoncé is slated to perform at the venue on her Cowboy Carter Tour, with roughly 43,000 fans expected later this month.
Neighboring transit agencies are preparing for an influx of commuters. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plans to deploy groups of employees to assist commuters at the Newark Penn Station, Harrison, Hoboken, 33rd Street and World Trade Center PATH stations. Riders to Newark can also take Amtrak trains.
Private bus operator Boxcar said it will nearly triple its capacity to accommodate as many as 6,000 riders.
Metro-North Railroad, which contracts with NJ Transit locomotive engineers, plans to honor tickets from its Port Jervis and Pascack Valley lines on other routes. It will also add extra cars on its Hudson line to accommodate any surge in demand on that route.
Road traffic could also worsen. The primary arteries for drivers traveling to Manhattan, such as the George Washington Bridge or the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, are poised for congestion if commuters opt for the roads.
Transit advocates worry that a strike would further erode commuter confidence in NJ Transit, which has suffered several bouts of service disruptions caused by breakdowns of its century-old infrastructure. Additionally, fares are projected to increase by 3% at the start of every fiscal year.
“This is a very high-stakes situation,” said Zoe Baldwin, New Jersey director of the nonprofit Regional Plan Association. “Riders were already seeing how stressed the system was before this. I’m definitely concerned that this strike will turn people away on a longer-term basis.”
Rail workers have gone without a raise since 2019, and the union said it’s seeking parity with engineers working at other major US railroads. But NJ Transit officials warn that agreeing to higher salaries could pressure the agency financially.
“I’m not being stingy,” NJ Transit Chief Executive Officer Kris Kolluri said at an April news briefing. Meeting union demands would require raising fares, hiking taxes on businesses or cutting service, he said.
The transit agency has said that the locomotive engineers make an average of $135,000 each year, a sum that would have increased to about $173,000 under the agreement the union members rejected.
The union says NJ Transit can afford the higher pay without raising fares.
In 2016, NJ Transit contract negotiations were settled hours before the strike deadline, and the last railroad strike against NJ Transit was in 1983, which lasted about a month. But current negotiations have been tense.
BLET National President Mark Wallace and General Chairman Tom Haas have traded barbs with Kolluri, and the two sides have reported conflicting figures on the average annual earnings of locomotive engineers.
Union members rejected a tentative work agreement presented by agency officials in April, and their counteroffer was denied thereafter.
Kolluri said both sides negotiated for more than six hours on Wednesday. Union members demonstrated outside of the agency’s headquarters moments before a NJ Transit board meeting last night, wearing red t-shirts that said “United We Bargain, Divided We Beg.”
A work stoppage could last for a single day or for weeks, but how it will play out largely hinges on public sentiment, according to Eric Blanc, assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University.
“Strikes are labor’s most powerful weapon,” he said. “The major goal is to create enough of a crisis that the public will put pressure on city managers to meet workers’ demands. But the danger is that that same crisis that they’re creating can turn them against the union. It’s part of the reason why transit union strikes are so rare.”
