A Long Island Rail Road strike set to begin Thursday, which would have caused a complete shutdown of the largest commuter rail service in the country, was averted earlier this week after representatives from the unions threatening to strike asked President Trump to intervene to force contract negotiations to continue. The looming walkout will likely be delayed until at least the middle of May 2026.
The threat of a strike had hung over the train-riding public since last Thursday, when the L.I.R.R. posted an alert on its social media, and on the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s TrainTime app, that train service “may be shut down beginning on Thursday, September 18 if some railroad unions strike,” and advised commuters to make plans to work from home if possible.
The announcement came just two weeks before the Ryder Cup, a biennial four-day golf competition between the United States and Europe, is to begin at the Bethpage Black Course in Farmingdale on Sept. 26, with about a quarter of a million fans expected to attend. The L.I.R.R. announced earlier this month that it would add extra train service throughout that week, estimating that up to 18,000 additional riders would travel by train each day to get to the course.
The M.T.A. announced last Thursday that in the event of a strike, it would offer limited shuttle service for essential workers during weekday rush hours, to run between the Bellmore, Hicksville, and Ronkonkoma stations and subway transfer points in Queens. There were no contingency plans for riders who rely on the trains to commute on the East End.
East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez told the town board on Tuesday that she had been discussing strike preparations in a Zoom meeting when word came that the strike had been delayed. “For context, the town has more than two dozen staff members that rely on the Long Island Rail Road to get to work,” she said, “so we had been making plans on how to accommodate schedules.”
One of those staff members is Patrick Derenze, the town’s public information officer, who takes the train to work every morning, utilizing the South Fork Commuter Connection, a coordinated train-and-shuttle-bus service that runs between Speonk and Montauk during weekday rush hours, connecting L.I.R.R. stations to employment centers across the East End. Mr. Derenze wrote in an email on Tuesday that the strike would not only have disrupted his own daily commute, but also those of essential workers whom he sees each day on his shuttle, which makes stops at John Marshall Elementary School and the Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department. The so-called last-mile shuttles also carry people from train stations to East Hampton High School, the Ross School, Springs and Montauk Schools, and the East Hampton Healthcare
Foundation building on Pantigo Place. “For many of them, a service suspension would have made getting to work extremely difficult, if not impossible,” he wrote of his fellow passengers. “I feel fortunate to have the option to work from home when needed, and that was my plan if there had been a short interruption in service. But eventually I would have had to return to the office, and without the train, that daily commute could stretch to four hours or more.”
Union representatives announced the strike’s delay in a press conference on Monday, after four days of accusations and blame-shifting between negotiating parties and government officials. The unions had been engaged in contract negotiations with the L.I.R.R. for more than two years, and the National Mediation Board, an independent agency of the federal government that coordinates labor disputes in the airline and railway industries to avoid disruptions to travel and interstate commerce, announced on Aug. 19 that it had released the parties from mediation after determining that they had reached an impasse.
A mandatory 30-day “cooling-off” period followed, which was set to end this morning. A strike would have begun unless one of the parties requested that the president establish an emergency board to force them back into mediation.
Gov. Kathy Hochul declined to make the request, stating last Thursday that “the White House already intervened, and they screwed us in the process,” seemingly referring to the National Mediation Board’s decision to release the parties from mediation, which effectively authorized a strike. The governor, a Democrat, wanted the two sides “back at the table,” she said, to continue discussions “in a meaningful, productive way,” but in the event of a strike, wanted the “entire community to know that this was initiated by the Trump White House.”
Representative Nick LaLota, a Republican, who represents this congressional district, criticized the governor’s response the next day on the social media platform X. “With a potential L.I.R.R. strike just days away, Gov. Hochul must do a deal with the unions or explain why she couldn’t,” he wrote. “Hochul once again failing to lead and attempting to shift blame to DC for a potential strike is further proof she’s America’s Worst (and weakest) Governor.”
Union officials announced Monday that the unions had all agreed to appeal to the president to intervene, after the M.T.A. and the governor declined to make the request. They also announced that their members had voted “overwhelmingly” to authorize a strike.
“While the M.T.A. is willing to use commuters to play a game of chicken with our unions days before Long Island is to host an international event, we will continue being the adults in the room, and we refuse to let New York State and the M.T.A. embarrass our region on the world stage,” Gilman Lang, the general chairman of the L.I.R.R. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said at the conference. “This action does not mean a strike won’t happen, but it does mean it won’t happen now.”
Jim Louis, a national vice president of that union, provided a potential timeline for the next phase of negotiations, based on the framework of the New Jersey Transit contract negotiations earlier this year. He estimated that the White House would establish the timeline this week, beginning a 120-day “status quo” period, after which the president could appoint a second board if the parties had still not reached an agreement. This process, he said, which is prescribed by federal law under the Railway Labor Act, would delay the unions’ ability to strike until the middle of May.
The M.T.A. quickly responded to the statement. “After months of radio silence, these outlier unions have finally admitted that they weren’t serious about negotiating. They never had a plan to resolve this at the bargaining table,” John J. McCarthy, the M.T.A.’s chief of policy and external relations, wrote. “If these unions wanted to put riders first, they would either settle or agree to binding arbitration. And if they don’t want to strike, they should say so — and finally show up to the negotiating table. This cynical delay serves no one.”
President Trump granted the representatives’ request, issuing an executive order Wednesday to establish an emergency board at 12:01 this morning. The board, to be composed of a chair and two other members appointed by the president, will investigate the dispute and report back to the president with recommendations within 30 days.
