NJ Transit brass and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen announced late Sunday that they’d reached a tentative agreement to raise wages for the 450 NJ Transit train engineers who went on strike Friday after contract negotiations had stalled.
“While I won’t get into the exact details of the deal reached, I will say that the only real issue was wages and we were able to reach an agreement that boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month and beyond where we were when NJ Transit’s managers walked away from the table Thursday evening,” BLET’s General Chairman for NJ Transit, Tom Haas, said in a statement.
“We also were able to show management ways to boost engineers’ wages that will help NJT with retention and recruitment, without causing any significant budget issue or requiring a fare increase.”
The strike has forced the suspension of rail service throughout New Jersey — and west of the Hudson River in New York state — since early Friday morning.
The tentative Sunday night agreement was welcome news to New Jersey commuters, but train service wasn’t scheduled to resume until early Tuesday morning.
Engineers returned to work Monday, but NJ Transit officials said they would spend the day conducting safety inspections and repositioning rail equipment for Tuesday morning, when all lines were expected to resume their regular schedules.
In the meantime, NJ Transit brass advised commuters to continue using the state’s bus network on Monday. Despite the tentative contract agreement, NJ Transit was continuing to run it’s so-called “contingency” bus service on Monday, including four park-and-ride routes meant to replace key rail connections.
Sunday’s tentative agreement is the second time BLET and NJ Transit management have shook hands on a wage bump. An initial tentative agreement in March was overwhelmingly rejected by the union’s rank-and-file membership, 87% of whom voted against the first tentative contract.
Sunday’s agreement will need to be ratified both by union membership — a process BLET leadership said would begin shortly, with results expected early next month.
NJ Transit’s board is expected to take up their own vote on the contract at their next meeting on June 11 .
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