The Long Island Rail Road shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday after a group of unions failed to reach a new contract deal with the MTA and went on strike, according to officials on both sides of the negotiations.
The move brought service on the country’s busiest commuter rail service to a halt for the first time in over 30 years. A Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers union spokesperson told Gothamist they didn’t expect the parties to return to negotiations Saturday.
The MTA and five unions representing a majority of the LIRR’s workforce couldn’t come to an agreement over pay raises and changes to work rules before a midnight strike deadline. As long as the strike drags on, some 275,000 daily commuters who use the railroad will need to find other ways to travel.
Kevin Sexton, national vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in a late-night press conference that no new round of talks had yet been scheduled.
“ We’re far apart at this point and we feel it’s unnecessary because we went through the process,” he said. Union officials said the parties would be in touch about next steps.
If the strike continues into Monday, the MTA plans to deploy limited shuttle bus service for commuters to connect to the city’s subway stations. Officials estimated the alternative service would cost as much as $550,000 daily.
At the Bay Shore, Hicksville and Mineola LIRR stations, shuttles will take commuters to the Howard Beach-JFK A train station.
At the Huntington and Ronkonkoma LIRR stations, shuttles will take commuters to the Jamaica-179th St. F train station.
Commuters in Nassau County can also use NICE bus services to get to the Flushing-Main St. station to ride the 7 train or the Jamaica Bus Terminal in Queens, which is close to the 169th St. F subway station.
A representative of the New York State Department of Transportation said it was preparing mitigation measures in anticipation of busier roads on Long Island, including electronic message signs on the highways warning drivers to plan ahead. State transportation officials also deployed more tow trucks, highway maintenance staff and traffic signal technicians in case of an emergency along the roads.
“We have to recognize over 277,000 daily customers. We couldn’t possibly accommodate that by buses. We have to do everything we can,” LIRR President Rob Free said last month while going over plans to provide shuttle buses if the workers walked off the job.
The MTA and Gov. Kathy Hochul are also encouraging businesses and their employees to work from home if possible.
At Atlantic Terminal in Downtown Brooklyn early Saturday, MTA workers were handing out info cards about the shuttle buses and advising commuters about the strike. A few dozen picketers were outside.
Feiona Harris was at the terminal, planning to commute to Shirley in Suffolk County. She said she only found out about the strike that morning, and wasn’t entirely sure what she’d do.
“Uber is going to be very expensive,” Harris said. “I can’t afford it.”
Shanique Grant was also planning to take the LIRR early Saturday morning after finishing an overnight shift as a nurse. She was deciding between shelling out the money for Uber or taking an ever longer commute on other public transit.
“I’m just trying to get home to my kids, and I have to still remember that they are still striking for their reasons so it’s not all about me,” she said. “But at the same time, whatever it is that they’re striking about, whoever is responsible for their inconvenience — I hope that they fix it because it is trickling down to everyone.”
Grant said she understood that “there has to be a reason why they would go to this length to ruin the commute, the schedule.”
“I do understand why they’re striking — however, it’s a big inconvenience to the rest of us riders who depend on the LIRR to get through the boroughs and Long Island,” she said.
It’s unclear how long the strike will last, but commuters will feel the pain if it persists through the start of the work week on Monday. An NJ Transit strike last year lasted three days. The last LIRR strike in 1994 lasted two days.
In the lead-up to the strike, MTA officials said they were in agreement with the unions on pay bumps for the first three years of a four-year contract, but there was a stalemate on pay for the final year.
At the union press conference, Sexton said MTA officials also tried to introduce negotiations about healthcare benefits late in negotiations. Union officials declined to discuss the details.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber said at a separate press conference shortly afterward that the MTA had proposed “a “new concept which is not unheard of at all,” for new LIRR workers to pay “reasonable portion of healthcare costs” — which he described as slightly more than existing employees pay. He said it would be about half of what an average New York state worker pays toward healthcare.
At an MTA board meeting in April, agency officials said the MTA would likely have to hike fares by 8% and cut jobs to avoid a deficit if it gave the union the pay bump it was asking for.
“Obviously, this is not the result we were looking for,” Lieber wrote in a statement he also read at his press conference. “But I, and this MTA board, have been clear that we cannot responsibly make a deal that implodes MTA’s budget.”
“We refuse to make a deal that puts it on riders and taxpayers to fund outsized wage increases — far beyond what anyone else at the MTA is getting — and for folks who are already the highest-paid railroad workers in the country,” Lieber added.
He said the average LIRR salary “was in the $136,000 range.”
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli estimated Friday a strike would cost up to $61 million in lost economic activity each day.
Teamsters with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, in their own statement, said the LIRR and MTA could have avoided the strike, citing recommendations from federally appointed review panels for more pay than the MTA had offered.
“This strike would not have happened if the MTA and LIRR offered our members the reasonable terms the government recommended multiple times. But management refused,” Mark Wallace, president of the BLET and the Teamsters Rail Conference said in the statement. “We hope LIRR gets serious soon to avoid further unnecessary disruptions for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. They know where to find us when they’re ready: on the streets.”
This story has been updated with more information.
Includes reporting by Jill Web, Giulia Heyward and Louis C. Hochman.
