New Jersey Transit train engineers OK tentative deal that ended strike which had halted NYC routes

New Jersey Transit’s train engineers have overwhelmingly approved a tentative deal that ended their three-day strike last month that halted service for some 100,000 daily riders, including routes to Newark airport and across the Hudson River to New York City.

The agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen announced the results Tuesday. They said the seven-year agreement, covering the years 2020-2027, was supported by 398 members, while 21 voters rejected it.

NJ Transit’s board of directors is scheduled to vote on the agreement when they meet Wednesday.

Details of the contract have not been released, but the union said it includes a “significant pay raise” and addresses other issues for the roughly 450 engineers who serve the agency. The main sticking point during negotiations had been how to accomplish a wage increase for the engineers without creating a financially disastrous domino effect for the transit agency.

The walkout that began May 16 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. It came a month after union members had overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management.

NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said the deal represents “a fair and fiscally responsible agreement for our locomotive engineers, NJ Transit, our customers, and the taxpayers of New Jersey.”

Union leaders voiced similar views.

“All along we’ve said we didn’t want to be the highest paid engineers, we only wanted equal pay for equal work,” said Tom Haas, who works as an NJT engineer and serves as BLET’s general chairman at the commuter railroad. “This agreement brings us close to what our peers make for doing the same type of work with the same levels of experience and training. This agreement gives us the pay raises we needed, but also was done without a major hit to NJT’s budget and should not require a fare hike for passengers.”

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.