The shot of the New Jersey Trains Train Strike leaves some 350,000 commuters to Luch

By Bruce Shipkowski, Associated Press

New Jersey Transit engineers went on strike, leaving the silent train terminals for Friday and around 350,000 commuters in New Jersey and New York to look for other means to reach their destinations or consider staying at home.

Groups of stakes gathered in front of the headquarters of public transport in Newark and the Hoboken terminal, carrying panels which said “locomotive engineers on strike” and “NJ Transit: Millions for Penthus sees nothing for train crews”.

Friday’s railroad journey in New York from New Jersey is usually the lightest of the week. In New York, some New Jersey commuters said they could not work remotely and had to enter, taking buses to the Port Authority bus in Manhattan.

David Milosevich, fashion and advertising casting director, was on the way to a photo shoot in Brooklyn. At 1 am, he checked his phone and saw the strike.

“I left the house very early because of this,” he said, entering the bus to Montclair, New Jersey, and arriving in Manhattan at 7 am. “I think a lot of people don’t come on Friday since Covid. I don’t know what’s going to happen on Monday.”

The strike comes after the talks this week has not led to an agreement

The disengagement comes after the last series of negotiations on Thursday did not produce agree. This is the first state transport strike in more than 40 years and occurs a month after the members of the union have massively rejected a work agreement with management.

“We presented the last proposal to them; They rejected it and left with two hours to play, “said Tom Haas, president of the brotherhood of locomotive engineers and trainmens.

The CEO of NJ Transit, Kris Kolluri, described the situation as a “break in conversations”.

“I certainly expect to take over these conversations as soon as possible,” he said Thursday evening at a joint press conference with the governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy. “If they are ready to meet this evening, I will come back to them tonight. If they want to meet tomorrow morning, I will do it again. Because I think it is an imminently achievable problem. The question is, she will have the will to come to a solution.”

Murphy and Kolluri planned a Friday morning press conference.

The tracks where NJ transit trains generally work are calm

A few houses from the port station of the port authority, the NJ transit train terminal was calm, with a public transport worker from the NJ in an orange hooded sweatshirt at hand to warn the runners he was closed, panels are read: “Suspended service”.

South Amboy station, an express stop on the NJ Transit rail line, was vacant. But the ferry of the navigable track which started the service only 18 months ago from a launch point by the water which is a 10 -minute walk from the station was more busy than usual for its non -stop trip at 6:40 p.m. and 55 minutes in Manhattan.

The ferry operates once a hour in the morning and in the evening. With about three dozen people on board, more than half of the seats in the lower ferry bridge were empty.

The Governor of the NJ says that the agreement must be fair for employees and affordable

Murphy said that it was important to “conclude a final agreement which is both just for employees and at the same time affordable for shuttle and taxpayers of New Jersey”.

“Again, we cannot ignore the agency’s budgetary realities,” said Murphy.

The announcement occurred after 15 hours of contract talks constantly, according to the union.

NJ Transit – The third public transport system of the country – operates buses and rails in the state, offering nearly a million trips during the week, especially in New York. The slipping interrupts all the suburban trains of public transport in the NJ, which provide highly used public transport roads between the New York Penn station on one side of the Hudson river and the Northern New Jersey communities on the other, as well as Newark Airport, which has been faced with recently linked delays.

The agency had announced emergency plans in recent days, saying that it was planning to increase the bus service, but warned the runners that buses would only add a “very limited” capacity to the existing suburbs of New York near the stations and would not start running on Monday.

However, the agency noted that the buses would not be able to manage almost the same number of passengers – only about 20% of current rail clients – so it urged people who could work at home to do so.

Earlier, even the thread of a strike caused travel disturbances. In the midst of uncertainty, the transit agency canceled the train and bus service for Shakira concerts on Thursday and Friday at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey.

The parties met on Monday a Federal Mediation Council in Washington to discuss the issue, and a mediator was present during the talks on Thursday. Kolluri said Thursday evening that the Mediation Council had suggested a Sunday morning meeting to resume talks.

Wages are the main negotiation point

Salaries were the main point of collision of negotiations between the agency and the brotherhood of locomotive engineers and trains who wish to see its members win salaries comparable to the other railways of passenger in the region. The union claims that its members earn an average salary of $ 113,000 per year and indicates that an agreement could be concluded if the CEO of the Kris Kolluri agency accepts an average annual salary of $ 170,000.

NJ Transit Leadership, however, disputes the union data, saying that engineers have an average total benefit of $ 135,000 per year, the highest employees exceeding $ 200,000.

Kolluri and Murphy said Thursday evening that the problem was not as long as the two parties can accept an increase in wages, but if they can do in terms which would not trigger other unions to demand similar increases and create a financially worried situation for NJ’s transit.

The congress has the power to intervene and block the strike and to force the union to accept an agreement, but the legislators did not show any desire to do this this time as they did in 2022 to prevent a strike of the national freight railway.

The union experienced regular attrition in its NJ transit while more of its members leave to occupy better paid jobs in other railways. The number of NJ transit engineers has increased from 500 to around 450 several months ago.

The journalists of the Associated Press Cedar Attanasio and Larry Neumeister in New York, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.

Originally published: May 16, 2025 at 6:04 PDT