New Jersey public transport engineers officially started their strike, closing the suburban trains and leaving hundreds of thousands of shuttlers who rush to find other modes of transport.
The members of the Syndicate of Engineers of the Fraternity of the Locomotive and Trains (BET) threatened to go on strike unless the NJ transit officials and the union were unable to agree on the terms and conditions of new contracts for workers who drive trains.
An agreement was close but not reached, according to the governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy, resulting in all the suburban trains of New Jersey and the New Jersey Transit and the MTA Metro-North West of Hudson The service to stop running when the strike started at 12:01 p.m. Friday.
An electronic display advises commoders of the potential disturbances of the NJ public transport service at Secaucus Junction Station in Secaucus, NJ, Wednesday May 14, 2025.
Seth Wenig / AP
On Thursday, the two parties gathered for the 11th hour negotiations to avoid the strike, in addition to a meeting in Washington, DC on Monday with the National Mediation Board, but no resolution has been reached.
During a press conference Thursday evening, Murphy and NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri encouraged the commuters to work at home on Friday.
“If you can work at home, certainly tomorrow, and you watch it would be a very good day to do it,” said Murphy.
Kolluri said Thursday evening that there had been an unchanging agreement and that negotiations were not a “lost cause”. We expect them to take up negotiations on Sunday morning, according to Kolluri.
After a meeting of the New Jersey Transit Board on Wednesday, Kolluri told journalists that he was “confident and optimistic” as for their efforts to avoid a strike.
“I’m going to stay at the negotiating table as long as it takes,” Kolluri said. “If it takes two in Tango, I think that if we can all focus on the task to be accomplished, which is to obtain a fair and affordable agreement, I think we can avoid a strike.”
Blet National President Mark Wallace said at a press conference on May 9 that it has been five years since train engineers working for NJ Transit received a salary increase.
“Reasonable people would vote for a fair agreement,” said Wallace.
People disembark from a suburban train of NJ Transit after arriving at the TRANSIT terminal on November 2, 2022, in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Gary Hershorn / ABC News
Tom Haas, the president of Blet, said at the same press conference that engineers working for NJ Transit earned an average salary of $ 113,000 per year. If the CEO of New Jersey Transit, Kris Kolluri, accepts an average salary of $ 170,000 per year for engineering operators, then “we obtained an agreement,” said Haas.
“NJ Transit locomotive engineers already have average total profits of $ 135,000 per year, the highest employees exceeding $ 200,000”, according to a statement On the New Jersey Transit website for negotiations with the Blet.
At a press conference separated on May 9, Kolluri responded to the union’s arguments, saying that Haas had previously accepted a salary increase to $ 49.82 an hour, but then demanded even higher wages because he thought there was a “better pot at the end of the rainbow”.
“I cannot continue to give money to the left and right to solve a problem. Everything comes down, which will pay for that? Money is not growing on the trees,” said Kolluri.
ABC News requests sent to NJ Transit and Blet for comments concerning the declarations of Wallace, Haas and Kolluri concerning complaints of the salary increase did not receive an answer.
NJ Transit States that if they were to accept Blet’s Terms, it would cost Both them and New Jersey Taxpayers $ 1.363 Billion Between July 2025 and June 2030. Additionally, if blet chooses to strike, the taxpayer cost of providing a limited alternative service Day, nj transit complaints.
Metro-north president Justin Vonashek announces transit options for Port Jervis Line and Pascack Valley Line’s customers if there is a NJ transit strike next week, May 8, 2025, in Tarrytown, New York.
Tania Savayan / Westchester County News Journal via USA Today Network via Imagn Images
NJ transit officials have said The strike “would disrupt the lives of more than 350,000 shuttle” and would develop a emergency plan This includes the addition of “capacity very limited to New York suburban bus routes existing near the stations and contract contracts with private carriers to operate the bus service” for shuttlers who generally rely on trains.
But even with the enlarged bus service, NJ Transit said that it “estimates that it can only carry 20% of current rail customers” because the bus system does not have the capacity to replace the suburban rail service.
Xuan Sharon Di, an associate professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia University, told ABC News before the start of the strike that he could be a “disaster” for traffic in Manhattan due to the increase in bus and car traffic in the city from shutivators unable to take the train. There will also be the additional commodities of commuters in Manhattan to pay recently congestion price.
“The New Jersey Transit is the backbone of the people who live in New Jersey to move. It was in fact shocked,” Di ABC News told a strike.
Steven Dog, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said that many of his colleagues use the NJ transit to track down and that a strike “would paralyze the vital arteries of transport in our regions”.
