NJ Transit Strike Live Updates: the train service is closed while the engineers come out

A second presidential emergency council then tried to tackle the question. In January, he also took part in NJ Transit’s offer as more reasonable than the union’s requests.

Mr. Kolluri took the reins of the agency in January at the request of Mr. Murphy, Governor of New Jersey, and has done priority with the engineers’ union. In March, he shakes the hand of a union official on an agreement that seemed to resolve the long -standing dead end. But in mid-April, the members of the union massively rejected this provisional contract.

The engineers asked to be paid equally with their counterparts who lead trains for Amtrak and the other suburban railways of the region – the long Island railway and the metro -north railway. Mr. Kolluri refused to accept such a significant increase, saying that it would increase the average annual engineers to $ 172,000, against $ 135,000, and could force the agency to increase prices by 17% or more.

Thomas Haas, the general president of the engineers’ union, argued that these figures had been inflated. He said his members earned about $ 10 from the time less than their peers.

The engineers’ union was the only 15 unions representing employees of New Jersey Transit who had not negotiated an agreement with the agency in recent years.

After the engineers rejected the terms of the provisional agreement in April, Mr. Kolluri returned to the negotiating table with union officials. But he presented the same offer that had just been rejected, angry with engineers.

Mr. Haas said Mr. Kolluri did not want to conclude an agreement. Mr. Kolluri, in turn, said he was asked about the mental health of Mr. Haas.

During all this time, Mr. Murphy, who had promised to “repair” the transit of the NJ, monitored the procedure at a distance.

The governor said on Wednesday evening that he had “spoke literally constantly” with Mr. Kolluri. Mr. Murphy said the two parties had made “huge progress”, and he hoped that everyone would leave with an agreement that provided “a piece of what they wanted and perhaps a piece of, you know, that they did not get”.