New Jersey Transit rail engineers were back at work Tuesday after ending a three-day strike Sunday over wages. NJ Transit spent Monday carrying out safety inspections required before the system could reboot.
Thousands of rail commuters across the state eased back into familiar rush hour routines on Tuesday.
In Newark, Kobie Langevine from Ewing said, “it’s like night and day, So I’m appreciative that they got a deal done.”
“My first day commuting to work was Friday and it took three hours to get home so I’m actually really happy that the trains are back on and congratulations to the transit workers for successfully negotiating their contract,” said Brittni Baxter.
Some rail commuters did experience delays Tuesday, due to a disabled Amtrak train at New York Penn Station and Amtrak switch problems that started in Elizabeth.
“I took the train this morning from Princeton Junction. It was on time, the windows were clean, and the customers and our riders couldn’t have been any more happy,” said NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri at Newark Penn Station, where he thanked riders and agency staff for their patience during the strike.
Negotiations between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen had dragged on since 2019. Their tentative deal will raises union wages but not transit fares or taxes, Kolluri promised.
“This is a fiscally sound package that was negotiated. Otherwise, the governor and I would not have signed off on it, and the riders should feel confident that the budgets that we put in place, especially for this year, will have no impact,” Kolluri said.
NJ Transit’s budget already includes a baked-in 3% fare hike in July. And some commuters worry about what’s yet to come. Tilene DeJesus of Newark didn’t buy assurances that the new contract won’t boost fares. “Maybe not at this present moment, there will be no fare hike, but it’s going to come. We always get hit with it eventually and it’s not fair because it’s not like the service gets any better.”
There’s also some skepticism among state lawmakers over the contract deal. Republicans like Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz (R-Union) have long called for a financial audit of the chronically cash-starved agency.
“We’ve just negotiated a pay increase, with no talk about where that money is going to come from,” Munoz said. “They’re assuring us that they’re not going to have a fare increase or increase in taxes, but how are they going to pay for this? We don’t know those details. I have been requesting and asking for an audit of NJ Transit for a number of years now. We need to look into those finances.”
Both NJ Transit and the union have resisted publicizing details of the tentative agreement — which raises engineers’ salaries to nearly what engineers at New York railroads are earning in exchange for concessions on work rules and medical benefit contributions, according to union sources.
