While a strike on the Long Island Rail Road, the nation’s largest commuter rail service, is now on hold for three months, a massive work stoppage could still happen in January if federal mediation over wage increases is unsuccessful.
Responding to a request by the unions, who’ve been negotiating with LIRR since 2022, President Donald Trump issued an executive order last month to establish a presidential emergency board to intervene in the wage dispute.
Several trade unions representing LIRR employees voted in favor of a strike in early September when their demand for a 16% salary bump over four years was rejected by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which countered with an increase of 9.5% over three years instead. A strike would be LIRR’s second one in nearly 30 years, poised to create a nearly impossible commute for passengers traveling between Long Island and Midtown Manhattan, and a loss of millions in revenue.
“The public should know the last thing that we want to do is strike,” said Kevin Sexton, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, a coalition of trade unions representing approximately 600 locomotive engineers. “Our objective is to secure a fair and reasonable agreement, but that doesn’t mean a strike won’t happen.”
Sexton said that because of inflation, “everything” has become expensive, prompting the need for a four-year contract that gives an additional 6.5% wage increase, paid in the last year of the agreement, to offset rising living costs.
“It’s groceries, gas, and the general cost of living, is up all together,” he said.
After the trade unions and LIRR present their cases to the federal panel sometime this fall, the panel will issue a non-binding recommendation for next steps.
“I can’t think of a time where labor has requested a presidential emergency board,” Sexton said. He blamed LIRR for “consistent stonewalling” the coalition of unions at the bargaining table for two years and then taking the “unprecedented steps to provoke a strike.”
The last LIRR trade union action was in 1994, when 2,300 employees held a strike for two days due to a contract dispute with the MTA, affecting 100,000 daily commutes until then Gov. Mario Cuomo intervened. If a strike had occurred in September, a work stoppage by LIRR employees would have disrupted travel for 220,000 daily commuters, according to MTA data.
Several passengers were relieved that didn’t happen.
Elle Randall, commuting daily to Manhattan from St. Albans, Queens, said that without the LIRR there would be even more hurdles for a commute that’s already difficult.
“I’m already taking, like, three roads of transportation,” Randall said, adding that without the train she’d have to either take a bus and then an Uber, or an Uber all the way, “which is like 100 dollars.”
Another commuter, Emmett Treacy, a construction professional who commutes daily to the city, said a strike on weekdays would severely impact him.
“Either I would have to work from home – remote – which I don’t do at all. I would just not work,” he said.
Melanie Swann, who takes the Montauk line from Bay Shore to Penn Station, is also relieved that trains are still running. “I’m happy that the strike isn’t happening, and I’m glad that they’ve decided to continue negotiating.”
Despite the threats to service and potential loss of job income, some commuters are still sympathetic to LIRR workers.
“I am a unionist,” Swann said, “so I understand the struggle.”