New Yorkers seeking to make a reverse commute into the Backyard State had been flummoxed on Friday, hours after NJ Transit’s 450 engineers went on strike within the early morning hours over a long-running wage dispute.
“I’m stuck, I need to go to Trenton,” he mentioned.
The 63-year-old Crown Heights development employee mentioned he’d been commuting to a job web site in New Jersey about 4 or 5 days every week, portray and putting in sheetrock.
A commuter checks a NJ Transit bus schedule within the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in New York, Friday. (Richard Drew/AP)
“I went to the Amtrak to try to see if I can get it to get to work,” Victory continued. “But when I went to the ticket booth, the guy told me that the ticket was $108 — and I only have $70 in my wallet.”
Cash — particularly the hourly wage for the engineers who make the nation’s third largest commuter rail community run — is on the middle of the labor dispute that got here to a head Thursday evening as talks stalled and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen known as the strike they first voted to authorize in August 2023.
Final week, BLET’s common chairman, Tom Haas, mentioned the dispute had come down to 1 factor: wage disparity between his members and their colleagues throughout the river on the Lengthy Island Rail Street and Metro-North.
“The only sticking point of this contract we have is wages,” he informed reporters final Friday. “We have sought nothing more than equal pay for equal work.”
Emma Seiwell / New York Every day Information
Crown Heights resident Victory, 63, seems at an empty part of Penn Station as he tries to discover a strategy to get to the Trenton development web site the place he works on Friday morning. (Emma Seiwell / New York Every day Information)
NJ Transit engineers’ hourly fee begins at $39.78 an hour — lower than their LIRR counterparts, who make $49.92, in addition to the engineers of Metro-North, who make $57.20.
However NJ Transit boss Kris Kolluri has mentioned he provided a elevate that will have seen the BLET members make $49.82 an hour by the summer time.
That supply led to a tentative settlement earlier this spring that appeared briefly to have averted NJ Transit’s first rail strike in 40 years. The proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by 87% of BLET membership, nonetheless.
The New Jersey Transit part of Penn Station was just about empty Friday after Transit employees went on strike. (Emma Seiwell / New York Every day Information)
Requested about that final week, Haas mentioned pay for the LIRR engineers — who’re within the midst of their very own contract negotiations — is more likely to go up, and due to this fact any pay parity with the Lengthy Island practice crews can be fleeting.
An intensive spherical of talks Thursday failed to seek out frequent floor, and shortly earlier than midnight the engineers introduced their intention to strike.
Victory, the development employee left stranded at Penn, mentioned he bore the engineers no ill-will.
“It’s their prerogative,” he mentioned of the strike. “It’s their right.”
Initially Revealed: Might 16, 2025 at 10:20 AM EDT
