With simply hours left earlier than a 12:01 a.m. strike deadline set by the NJ Transit native that represents the Backyard State’s lots of of practice engineers, spokesmen for the union and NJ Transit administration mentioned talks had been persevering with Thursday.
“The strike by NJ Transit’s 450 engineers is scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, Friday, May 16 — if an agreement is not reached at the bargaining table today,” he added.
A spokesman for NJ Transit’s administration mentioned there have been no updates to report Thursday afternoon, however confirmed that negotiations had been ongoing.
The strike countdown comes after BLET membership voted overwhelmingly to reject a tentative settlement reached between NJ Transit and the union in March. Each side say wages have been the sticking level.
An digital show advises commuters of potential NJ Transit service disruptions on the Secaucus Junction. (Seth Wenig/AP)
BLET’s normal chairman for the Backyard State, Tom Haas, has mentioned his members need wage parity with their colleagues who function the trains for the Lengthy Island Rail Street and Metro-North.
NJ Transit President and CEO Kris Kolluri, nonetheless, says that might lead each different union concerned with the practice system to ask for related raises, endangering NJ Transit’s monetary future.
At the moment, NJ Transit engineers’ hourly price begins at $39.78 an hour — whereas their LIRR counterparts make $49.92 and Metro-North operators get $57.20 an hour.
Kolluri has mentioned that the settlement rejected by BLET membership would have put the Jersey crews inside spitting distance of these working the opposite facet of the Hudson — at $49.82 an hour by the summer season.
However Haas has mentioned pay for the LIRR engineers — who’re within the midst of their very own contract negotiations — is prone to go up, and thus any pay parity with the Lengthy Island engineers could be fleeting.
Ought to the engineers strike, BLET says its members will likely be on picket traces all throughout the NJ Transit rail community by 4 a.m. Friday.
