Gov. Hochul is asking Lengthy Island’s Republican congressional delegation to talk up a few looming attainable Lengthy Island Rail Street strike because the MTA braces for the transit system’s staff to stroll off the job on the nation’s busiest commuter railroad.
5 LIRR unions representing some 1,300 staff — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen, the Worldwide Affiliation of Machinists, the Worldwide Brotherhood of Eletrical Staff, and the Transportation Communications Union — have all rejected a proposed contract that will give their members a 9.58% increase over three years, citing rising price of residing.
The LIRR’s largest union — the Worldwide Affiliation of Sheet Steel, Air, Rail and Transportation Staff (SMART) — has accepted the deal.
Beneath Federal Railroad Administration guidelines, unions should undergo mediation by the Nationwide Mediation Board earlier than they will legally strike. If the board determines no decision could be reached, then unions are launched from that requirement and — pending a 30-day “cooling-off period” — can strike.
An LIRR prepare is pictured at Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn on Saturday, June 7, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Each day Information)
The Trump administration launched the unions from their mediation necessities in August, that means they will strike as early as Sept. 18 — subsequent week.
In Wednesday’s letter, Hochul known as that call “premature.”
“Last month, the Trump administration took the unprecedented step of prematurely releasing parties from mediation without the parties reaching an agreement,” she wrote.
“To date,” she stated, addressing Lengthy Island’s Republican Congress members, “you have been silent on the Administration’s actions, which threaten to cause havoc for the hundreds of thousands of your constituents that depend on the LIRR every day.”
Neither Garbarino nor LaLota instantly responded to a request for touch upon the letter Thursday.
Hochul, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or the unions can name on Trump to nominate a “Presidential Emergency Board” of mediators who would oversee additional contract talks, a course of that would take as much as six months.
Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen kind a picket line exterior the NJ Transit Headquarters on Friday, Might 16, 2025, in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Picture/Stefan Jeremiah)
The current strike by NJ Transit engineers happened after two Presidential Emergency Boards had been fashioned.
Requested Wednesday if she would search federal intervention, Hochul positioned blame for the state of affairs squarely on the president.
“The White House already intervened, and they screwed us in the process,” she stated. “They never should have given license to stop the negotiations.”
“I want people back at the table. I want the conversations to occur in a meaningful, productive way,” she added. “But when the worst situation happens, I need this complete neighborhood to know that this was initiated by the Trump White Home.
“They could have stopped it — they still can withdraw the authorization (to strike),” she stated.
LIRR staff haven’t gone out on strike since 1994. A attainable 2014 strike was narrowly averted.
Initially Revealed: September 11, 2025 at 1:48 PM EDT
