A strike would stop all NJ Transit trains starting on May 16, affecting 350,000 commuters.
NEW YORK CITY—New Jersey Transit train engineers went on strike on May 16, halting service to 350,000 riders in the New Jersey and New York area.
The strike began at 12 a.m. on Friday after an agreement was not reached in the latest round of negotiations on Thursday.
“We presented them the last proposal; they rejected it and walked away with two hours left on the clock,” said Tom Haas, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET).
NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri described the situation as a “pause in the conversations.”
“I certainly expect to pick back up these conversations as soon as possible,” he said late Thursday during a joint news conference with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “If they’re willing to meet tonight, I’ll meet them again tonight. If they want to meet tomorrow morning, I’ll do it again. Because I think this is an imminently workable problem. The question is, do they have the willingness to come to a solution.”
Murphy said it was important to “reach a final deal that is both fair to employees and at the same time affordable to New Jersey’s commuters and taxpayers.”
“Again, we cannot ignore the agency’s fiscal realities,” Murphy said.
The strike shut down NJ Transit rail services as well as Metro-North rail lines west of the Hudson River.
NJ Transit has a contingency plan to operate more commuter buses in the case of a strike, but estimates it could handle only 20 percent of the usual train customers.
The engineers union BLET has 450 NJ Transit engineers in its organization.
