Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028532
NEW JERSEY
NJ RAIL TRANSIT
New Jersey Transit and Engineers’ Union Agree to Deal to End Strike
NJ RAIL TRANSIT
New Jersey Transit and Engineers’ Union Agree to Deal to End Strike
Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of NJ Transit, said it would take a day to conduct safety inspections and inspect tracks before service could resume.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times
Original article:
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
The agency said its trains would start running again on Tuesday morning.
Written by Patrick McGeehan
May 18, 2025 ... Updated 9:11 p.m. ET
An agreement was reached on Sunday to end New Jersey’s first statewide transit strike in more than 40 years just three days after it started, New Jersey Transit and a union spokesman said.
The union that represents the state’s passenger-train drivers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said it called off the strike at about 6 p.m., and NJ Transit said its trains would begin running a full schedule again on Tuesday morning.
Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of NJ Transit, said it would take a day to conduct safety inspections and inspect tracks before service could resume.
For Monday, the agency said, it would rely on its original strike contingency plan involving chartered buses running from four satellite locations into New York City or to stations on the PATH commuter train service.
“The sound that you probably hear is the sound of our state’s commuters breathing a collective sigh of relief, said Gov. Philip D. Murphy, who announced the agreement at a news conference on Sunday night.
“If both employers and employees could please give us one more day of work from home, that would be a huge, huge boost,” Mr. Murphy said. State officials had asked commuters to work from home during the strike if their presence in the workplace was not considered essential.
Mr. Murphy declined to provide any details of the tentative agreement but said it was “fair to NJ Transit’s employees while also being affordable for our state’s commuters and taxpayers.”
The main sticking point had been the engineers’ demand that they be paid on par with their counterparts who drive trains for other passenger railroads, including Amtrak and New York’s commuter railroads. Mr. Kolluri implied that the agreement involved some concessions by the engineers on work rules that would help cover the cost of the raises they sought.
He did not say how much the strike had cost the agency, but he had estimated that it would cost about $4 million per day.
“It is now the union’s job to go back and brief their members and put the agreement up for ratification,” Mr. Kolluri said.
The engineers had already voted down a previous agreement Mr. Kolluri had reached with the leaders of their union. But Mr. Murphy said he had “a high degree of confidence” that the engineers would find the new terms acceptable.
The engineers walked out at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, bringing New Jersey’s network of commuter train lines to a halt and leaving thousands of commuters scrambling to find other ways of getting to work. NJ Transit, which operates the nation’s third-largest commuter railroad, said it carried about 350,000 passengers per day, including about 70,000 who ride its trains into Manhattan on a typical weekday.
The engineers’ union had been holding out for a new contract for more than five years and was the only one of 15 unions that represent NJ Transit rail employees that had not come to terms with the agency in recent years.
Mr. Kolluri had implored customers to work from home during the strike if possible because the chartered buses would only be able to accommodate about one-fifth of the usual New York-bound train riders. Some large companies agreed to allow employees to work from home during the strike if their presence in the workplace was not considered essential.
But on Friday morning, commuters got a taste of how disruptive a prolonged strike might be. People arrived at train stations unaware that the trains were not running, leaving them annoyed and unsure how they would get to work.
In addition to commuter hassle, the strike had also threatened to cause economic damage to the New York area.
The Partnership for New York City, which represents large employers, said each hour that New Jersey Transit’s rail commuters were delayed in getting to work reduced overall productivity in the city by $6 million.
State officials and union leaders blamed each other for the breakdown in talks on Thursday night that spurred the strike.
Governor Murphy castigated the union, saying, “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.”
The union’s general chairman, Thomas Haas, and Mr. Kolluri announced in March that they had reached a tentative agreement that would head off a strike. Mr. Kolluri said that deal would have raised the engineers’ average annual pay to $172,000, from $135,000.
But the engineers overwhelmingly rejected the terms of that agreement in April, reviving the threat of a walkout. Mr. Haas said the agency’s representatives had walked away from the bargaining table on Thursday night, leaving his members no alternative but to leave NJ Transit with nobody to drive its trains.
The two sides met for much of the weekend to try to resolve their differences before feeling the accumulating frustration of dislocated commuters.
After holding an abruptly scheduled meeting on Saturday afternoon, they met again on Sunday in a session mediated by the National Mediation Board, which had been involved in the talks since Monday.
Jay Frederick, 47, who runs the commissary at Northern State Prison in Newark, said he spent Friday at home because he was not able to get to work. “It’s a relief,” that the strike is over., Mr. Frederick said. “I like commuting. The hustle and bustle is good for me. But not this much hustle and bustle. You need these things, these trains and buses, to be in place.”
Chris Smith, 54, said he paid $79 for a one-way ticket on Amtrak to get to his job as an executive chef in Midtown Manhattan on Friday. He said he was ready to book himself a hotel room in the city this week if the strike continued.
He was not impressed by the speed with which NJ Transit struck its deal. “I think they’re selfish,” he said. “They put tens of thousands of people in a stress environment. Friday was horrible. Trust me.”
Mark Bonamo and Tammy LaGorce contributed reporting from New Jersey.
Patrick McGeehan is a Times reporter who covers the economy of New York City and its airports and other transportation hubs.
A version of this article appears in print on May 18, 2025 of the New York edition with the headline: N.J. Transit and Union Reach Deal to End Strike. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe See more on: New Jersey Transit Share full article
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