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Posted by
Olog-hai
on Fri May 16 14:52:47 2025, in response to NJ Transit engineers go on strike @ 12:01 am 5/16/25, posted by Gold_12Th on Thu May 15 23:26:24 2025.
NY Poast
NJ Gov. Murphy blasts striking NJ Transit union workers leaving 350,000 commuters in travel nightmareNew Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy ripped NJ Transit engineers for going on strike Friday — blasting their actions as a “slap in the face” to commuters and a “mess of their own making.”
The Democrat lashed out after roughly 400 rail engineers walked off the job after marathon contract talks stalled ahead of a midnight deadline, setting off the first strike to hit the major transit system in more than 40 years.
“It did not have to come to this,” Murphy told a news conference after the morning commuter rush got underway.
“A small handful of locomotive engineers have walked off the job and shut down our entire transit system,” he continued, adding that “we’re talking just under 400 engineers in a total workforce of about 12,000.”
“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.”
Murphy urged the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union (BLET), which represents the engineers who drive the agency’s commuter trains, to come back to the negotiating table.
“What the people of New Jersey need right now is for the members to meet their obligations to the public,” he said. “Let’s end the strike.”
“We are ready to restart negotiations, literally this second, but we need the BLET to come back to the negotiating table in good faith,” he added.
The union, for their part, blamed transit management negotiators for walking out of the bargaining talks late Thursday.
“We presented them with a deal and they walked away,” the union’s national president, Mark Wallace, said. “They chose to leave. We did not.”
Wages are the key sticking point of the strike, according to the union.
BLET had been seeking its first pay increase since 2019 for 450 of its engineers, a source familiar with the negotiations earlier told The Post, adding that NJ Transit could fully fund the sought increase with a seven-and-a-half-year contract for less than $30 million.
The union has said it was aiming to raise the engineers’ salaries to match those at other commuter railroads in the region – including Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad.
“For six years our engineers have not had a pay raise,” the union prez said.
“They make $10 less an hour than Long Island Railroad. They make $10 less an hour than Amtrak, Path, Metro North. They’re the lowest paid commuter engineers today in the United States.”
NJ Transit said the engineers currently make $135,000 on average and that management had offered a deal that would yield an average salary of $172,000 by 2027.
NJ Transit, however, has said it can’t afford the pay raises the engineers are seeking because 14 other unions that negotiate separate labor contracts with the agency would then demand higher wage rates for their members.
“I for one refuse to pass the buck or increase taxes on hard working New Jerseyans for the same, or even more likely, reduced service. That’s not going to happen. That is untenable,” Murphy said.
NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said they got close to what the union was seeking on wages but raised concerns about the longer-term fiscal health of the transit agency.
“What’s the point of giving you a pay raise if a couple of years from now your job is not going to exist?” Kolluri said. “That’s sort of what we’re talking about in the most plain and simple terms.”
Murphy, meanwhile, argued that it wasn’t about politics.
“We’re holding the line for the next governor and the next administration so they do not inherit a NJ Transit that is on the brink of fiscal collapse, but is in fact in a strong state of health,” he said.
“That is what it means to fix NJ Transit, leaving the agency better in every respect, but especially in fiscal terms, than when we entered office.”
The next talks are scheduled for Sunday with the help of federal mediators.
Thought Democrats were pro-“labor”?
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