Tentative Deal Reached in 3-Day NJ Transit Strike

Democratic Governor Phil Murphy tried to blame the New Jersey Transit strike on members of the Teamsters Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET). Photo courtesy of the union

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By Bob Hennelly

After a 3-day strike, the Teamsters Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen (BLET) have reached a tentative deal with NJ Jersey Transit. 

“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,” Tom Haas, head of the union’s unit that represents the NJ Transit engineers, 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 deal, which still must be approved by rank and file members will be the first raise for them since 2019. Service will resume Tuesday.

”I am pleased to announce that we have reached a fair and fiscally responsible contract settlement that provides a generous wage increase for BLET members while saving taxpayers and customers the burden of fare increases,”said Governor Murphy. “This agreement reflects the commitment of both the BLET and NJ TRANSIT to remain at the table engaging in productive conversations, and I commend them both. Most importantly, it ensures the resumption of rail service for the 100,000 people who depend on our rail system on a daily basis.”

“I am pleased to join Governor Murphy to announce that we have reached a mutually acceptable agreement that is both fair for our locomotive engineers and affordable for our riders and New Jersey taxpayers. I want to thank our customers for their understanding and apologize for any inconvenience during this time, however, it was important to me to reach a deal that didn’t require a significant fare increase,” said NJ TRANSIT President & CEO Kris Kolluri. “I appreciate the BLET leadership’s collaboration at the bargaining table and continuing to negotiate in good faith to get to an agreement.”

A strike in 1983 last for a month.

Before the deal was reached Governor Phil Murphy predictably blamed the workers and their union. 

“It is frankly a mess of their own making and it is a slap in the face of every commuter and worker who relies on NJ Transit,” Murphy said at a press conference according to the New York Times. 

This blaming the union strategy echoed the line of attack we saw a week before the strike when NJ Transit boss Kris Kolluri questioned the mental health of Tom Haas, general chairman of the Teamsters Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, who is also a working train engineer because the NJ Transit local is too small a bargaining unit to support him working only on union business. 

The awful truth is Murphy and NJ Transit were the ones who walked away last Thursday leaving the union at the table.

“We’ve been at this for over five years trying to negotiate a contract, one that would pay engineers fairly, closer to what every other passenger engineer on the United States is making right now,” Haas said on WBAI. “NJ Transit engineers are 20 percent behind everyone else and NJ Transit is just dug in that they won’t give us a fair increase.”

When Kolluri called Haas’s mental state into question he referenced the union president’s letter of support for an initial deal the union had tentatively accepted pending a vote by the rank and file union members. They voted it down, something Kolluri had left out of his opening remarks at the pre-strike press conference.

It’s that democratic aspect of the union movement that confounds corporatists like Kolluri and Murphy. 

Murphy is a self-described “cold blooded capitalist” and a former Goldman Sachs banker with staggering personal wealth who takes a media hit when he retreats to his Italian villa for holiday. 

Should we be surprised that NJ Transit spent $500 million on leasing a new corporate HQ and tens of millions to furnish it? 

This is the same governor who let US Steelworkers Nurses Local 4-200 twist in the wind when they went out on strike for safer staffing at the politically-connected Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick from August to December of 2023. In a move that should have been investigated, Murphy’s chief of staff George Helmy went to work for the Robert Wood Johnson in the midst of the strike where the fugazi non-profit spent well over $150 million on strike-breaking nurses. 

Helmy was rewarded with being appointed to fill out the unexpired term of Senator Bob Menendez, who was convicted on corruption charges. 

It was Murphy who opted not to support a $100 million pandemic hazard pay bill for tens of thousands of low wage essential workers who worked in the midst of the COVID mass death event that killed tens of thousands of workers.

While local, county and state governments used some of the multi-billion dollar federal windfall for that purpose, Murphy and the similarly-minded state legislature leadership bought new SUVs and funded local pet projects as a down payment on their re-election.

Nationally, it is the Murphy corporatist wing of the Democratic Party that has kept the federal minimum wage at $7.25 since 2009 and permitted over 24 million Americans to be thrown off Medicaid when President Joe Biden declared an end to the pandemic despite the reality that America’s healthcare system was still reeling from  COVID that both parties failed to prepare for despite expert predictions it was just a matter of time. 

It’s this wing that turned a deaf ear to the concerns of tens of millions of Americans who were not thriving as a result of the Biden economy. Their beltway hubris set the stage for the elevation of the Trump/Musk junta that’s now working 24/7 to obliterate federal unions as they round up essential workers for deportation to places like El Salvador. 

Editor’s Note: This story was revised to reflect the tentative new deal between NJ Transit and BLET.