New Yorkers trying to make a reverse commute into the Backyard State have 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 stated.
The 63-year-old Crown Heights building employee stated he’d been commuting to a job website 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 referred to as the strike they first voted to authorize in August 2023.
Final week, BLET’s normal chairman, Tom Haas, stated the dispute had come down to at least one factor: wage disparity between his members and their colleagues throughout the river on the Lengthy Island Rail Highway and Metro-North.
“The only sticking point of this contract we have is wages,” he advised 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, appears to be like at an empty part of Penn Station as he tries to discover a approach to get to the Trenton building website the place he works on Friday morning. (Emma Seiwell / New York Every day Information)
NJ Transit engineers’ hourly price 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 stated he supplied a elevate that will have seen the BLET members make $49.82 an hour by the summer season.
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, nevertheless.
The New Jersey Transit part of Penn Station was nearly empty Friday after Transit staff went on strike. (Emma Seiwell / New York Every day Information)
Requested about that final week, Haas stated pay for the LIRR engineers — who’re within the midst of their very own contract negotiations — is prone 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 widespread floor, and shortly earlier than midnight the engineers introduced their intention to strike.
Victory, the development employee left stranded at Penn, stated he bore the engineers no ill-will.
“It’s their prerogative,” he stated of the strike. “It’s their right.”
Initially Revealed: Could 16, 2025 at 10:20 AM EDT
