New Jersey Transit’s train engineers overwhelmingly approved a preliminary agreement ending their three -day strike last month, which stopped the service for approximately 100,000 daily riders, including routes to the Newark Airport and across the Hudson River to New York. The agency and the brotherhood of locomotive engineers and train men announced the results on Tuesday. They said that the seven-year agreement, which covers the years 2020-2027, is supported by 398 members, while 21 voters rejected it. NJ Transit’s board of directors is scheduled to vote on the agreement when they meet on Wednesday. Details of the contract were not disclosed, but the union said it included a ‘significant wage increase’ and addressed other issues for the approximately 450 engineers serving the agency. The most important point during negotiations was how to create a wage increase for the engineers without creating a financially disastrous domino effect for the transit agency. The hike that began on May 16 was the first transit strike in over 40 years, forcing people who normally rely on New Jersey transport to take buses, cars, taxis and boats or stay at home. It comes a month after union members overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management. NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said the agreement is a fair and fiscal responsible agreement for our locomotive engineers, NJ Transit, our clients and New Jersey taxpayers. ” Union leaders expressed similar views. “We have always said that we do not want to be the highest paid engineers, we just want equal payment for equal work,” says Tom Haas, who works as an NJT engineer and serves as the general chairman of Blet at the Commuter Railroad. “This agreement brings us close to what our peers make to do the same kind of work with the same levels of experience and training. This agreement gives us the wage increases we need, but is also done without a big hit of NJT’s budget and should not require a rate for passengers.” NJ Transit-the country’s third largest transit system industry buses and state tracks and offers nearly 1 million trips on weekdays, including to New York. The hike has stopped all NJ Transit Commuter trains, offering many used public transport routes between the Penn station in New York on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other, as well as the Newark Airport, which recently is not related to its own.
New Jersey Transit Train Engineers OK provisional agreement that ended the strike that stopped NYC routes | Company Business News
