New Jersey’s transit union reaches ‘fair and fiscally responsible’ deal to end 3-day strike

New Jersey Transit’s train engineers reached a tentative deal Sunday to end their three-day strike that had halted service for some 100,000 daily riders, including routes to Newark airport and across the Hudson River to New York City. The union said its members would return to work on Tuesday, when trains would resume their regular schedules.

The walkout that began Friday was the state’s first transit strike in over 40 years, forcing people who normally rely on New Jersey Transit to take buses, cars, taxis and boats instead or consider staying home. The main sticking point had been how to accomplish a wage increase for the engineers without creating a financially disastrous domino effect for the transit agency.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen initially announced regular train service would begin again Monday, but moments later, union spokesperson Jamie Horwitz said NJ Transit informed them that it would be Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. instead.

A transit agency statement said the Tuesday start was necessary because “it takes approximately 24 hours to inspect and prepare the infrastructure before returning to full scheduled service.”

A union statement sent by email said the terms of the agreement would be sent to the union’s 450 members who work as locomotive engineers or trainees at the passenger railroad.

“While I won’t get into the exact details of the deal reached, I will say that the only real issue was wages and we were able to reach an agreement that boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month and beyond where we were when NJ Transit’s managers walked away from the table Thursday evening,” said Tom Haas, the union’s general chairman at NJ Transit.

He added that the union was able to show management “ways to boost engineers’ wages … without causing any significant budget issue or requiring a fare increase.”

The union statement also said the deal would be submitted for a ratification vote by the national union and would require a vote of the New Jersey Transit board at its next regularly scheduled meeting on June 11. NJ Transit’s board also has to approve the deal.

“To offer the understatement of the year, this is a very good outcome,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said at a Sunday evening news conference. He commended the two sides for finding an agreement that is “both fair to NJ Transit’s employees while also being affordable for our state’s commuters and taxpayers.”

NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri didn’t provide details of the deal, but said it was “fair and fiscally responsible.” He thanked the union for negotiating in good faith.

“The deal itself reflects a series of concessions that came together by way of a work bill that will eventually end up paying for this fair wage that the union has asked for,” Kolluri said at the news conference.

Buses would be provided on Monday, but Murphy and Kolluri both urged commuters, if possible, to work from home for one more day.

“Please do that tomorrow so we can move essential employees through the system,” Kolluri said.

A month earlier, members of the union had overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management.

NJ Transit — the nation’s third-largest transit system — operates buses and rail in the state, providing nearly 1 million weekday trips, including into New York City. The walkout halted all NJ Transit commuter trains, which provide heavily used public transit routes between New York City’s Penn Station on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other, as well as the Newark airport, which has grappled with unrelated delays of its own recently.

Mark Wallace, the union’s national president, had said NJ Transit needs to pay engineers a wage that’s comparable to Amtrak and Long Island Railroad because some are leaving for jobs on those other railroads for better pay.

The union had said its members have been earning an average salary of $113,000 a year and it wanted to see an agreement for an average salary of $170,000.

NJ Transit leadership, though, disputed the union’s data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000.

Weber reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska.

—Bruce Shipkowski and Christopher Weber, Associated Press

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