By B. COOPER
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) went on strike at New Jersey Transit starting on Friday, May 16. The action halted trains on the rail system throughout the state, including commuter service to New York City and Philadelphia, and affecting some 350,000 daily riders. The union reached a tentative agreement with the agency on Saturday, ending the strike action; service resumed on Tuesday.
The train engineers and trainees struck over wages, which were well below those of their peers in the industry nationwide, including at Amtrak. This was the first strike at NJ Transit in 42 years.
The details of the new tentative agreement have not been released as of writing but point to the wage demands being met. However, the workers may be asked to give concessions on work rules and perhaps other issues. No increases in fares have been indicated. The union membership will begin mail balloting on the contract right away.
An earlier tentative agreement with management, which took place in March, was rejected by 87 percent, with 93 percent of the union membership voting. When further negotiations collapsed last week, a strike was indicated. According to the union website: “BLET members at NJ Transit have been seeking a new agreement since 2019. They have gone without a raise for five long years. In August 2023, the members of the local union voted unanimously to grant the BLET National President the authority to call a strike when it became lawful to do so and if a deal had not been reached.”
L., a unionized worker at a university in New Jersey and a Workers’ Voice member, visited the picket line in Newark over the weekend and talked to some of the strikers. She reported, “The office building at 2 Gateway Center is leased by NJ Transit for $500 million, while the building that NJT owns down the street is not being used at full capacity. This was one of the facts that one of the engineers shared with me while we talked.”
This fact was included in a statement released just before the strike by BLET National President Mark Wallace. He pointed out that NJ Transit has “money for penthouse views and pet projects, just not for their front-line workers. Enough is enough. We will stay out until our members receive the fair pay that they deserve.”
“But what about the commuters?”
In the weeks preceding the strike, the capitalist-owned media attempted to drive a wedge between the striking workers and the commuting public. Some examples are the national reporting by the Associated Press (see CBS 8 in San Diego) and 6 ABC news in Philadelphia, whose headlines highlight the impact of the strike on commuters and emphasize interviews with annoyed commuting workers. Reporting tends to downplay the voices of the BLET union and highlights the aggravation expressed by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy—or the NJ Transit top executives themselves.
A particularly egregious example is from a post-strike (May 18) New York Times article framing the striking engineers as greedy and making certain to quote the opinion of a commuter (an executive chief, no less!). “I think they’re selfish,” he said. “They put tens of thousands of people in a stress environment. Friday was horrible. Trust me.”
Gov. Murphy, in the same article, blasted the union for being responsible for the breakdown in negotiations that precipitated the strike: “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.”
For our part, we think a better picture of reality can be gained by listening to the workers. L. states that she spoke with some workers on the picket line about the need for labor solidarity. The BLET represents 450 train engineers, but other jobs are performed by workers in different unions. One worker “explained many nuances of the work that engineers do in tandem with other workers for New Jersey Transit. He said that most workers were honoring the BLET picket line, in part because there was no work to do if engineers weren’t operating the trains.”
No government intervention—for now
The BLET workers negotiate under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), and not under the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), as most other U.S. workers do. The RLA is much stricter than the NLRB in enforcing certain steps in negotiations and limits the kinds of issues for which unions can call strikes. We reported on these differences during the 2022 national rail strike.
Unlike in the 2022 strike, the U.S. government did not directly intervene. According to the BLET, “Under the rules of the Railway Labor Act, the United States Congress could have intervened to delay or block the NJ Transit strike but chose not to intervene.”
BLET National President Mark Wallace added, “I want to thank members of Congress for allowing the process to work without interference. This should be a lesson for other railroad disputes. Nothing would have been gained by kicking the can down the road. Allowing strikes to happen encourages settlement rather than stonewalling.
Clearly, the speed of the settlement demonstrates in a real way the power that U.S. rail workers have to fight the employer in order to gain a basic quality of life. However, as we have maintained before, the RLA is ultimately a tool of the bosses, and workers who want to fight for more will one day need to go beyond the limitations of the RLA—and indeed all labor law—to fight for a world worth living in.
As the Trump administration continues its assault on the basic labor protections of every worker, as well as on the civil liberties of U.S. residents, working people will need to build a new culture and new organizations of solidarity with each other to overcome the authoritarianism of the government and the bosses.
L. told Workers’ Voice, “The success of the strike will be determined by the terms of the new contract, but also the learning and organizing experience that workers gained through this contract campaign.
“Visiting the picket was also an energizing reminder to me personally that it is always a great experience to participate in a picket line, especially with coworkers or folks in your community whom you can share the experience with. The picket line is an unusual, temporary space that does not exist in everyday society. Business as usual is paused, and in that space we are able to talk to each other, learn, and imagine a different future.”
Photo by Workers’ Voice.