With a strike looming at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday barring a contract agreement, negotiations between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a coalition of the Long Island Rail Road unionized work force were to resume yesterday.
The five unions making up the Coalition of Long Island Rail Road Unions complained in a statement on Tuesday that no negotiations had taken place that day. The MTA “continues to show no sense of urgency,” according to the statement. “Leaders of the unions in the coalition wanted to hold contract talks today, but representatives from the transit agency said they would be unavailable.”
“We would like to settle this without a strike,” Kevin Sexton, a vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and a spokesman for the coalition, said in the statement. “We want to keep the trains moving. . . . However, we need managers across the table who show up and are committed to getting a deal done.”
“We met yesterday and the L.I.R.R. made a revised proposal,” Joana Flores, the M.T.A.’s media liaison, told The Star on Tuesday. “Talks continue.” When asked, she declined to elaborate on the proposal to which she referred.
“Even though our people kept the train running during Covid and are lauded as heroes for that,” a coalition spokesman who asked not to be named told The Star, “the last time we got a raise was 2022, and for four years have gone without.”
The spokesman noted that the federal Department of Labor reported on Tuesday that the Consumer Price Index rose 3.8 percent in April from a year earlier, with prices rising at the fastest rate in three years as the Trump administration’s attack on Iran drives energy costs sharply higher. “What we’re asking for,” he said, “is a contract that is basically status quo, close to a break-even contract that keeps pace with inflation. That’s it. If they would give us that or something close, they’d probably have a deal.”
The two sides have agreed about retroactive general wage increases of 3 percent in June 2023 and June 2024, and 3.5 percent in June 2025, over the wages then in effect. The five unions have requested a 5-percent general wage increase for 2026, but the M.T.A. has most recently offered a 4.5-percent increase contingent on “reasonable changes to work rules,” including restricting employees from working more than 18 continuous hours and a reduction of the full extra day’s penalty pay that is currently required when engineers operate both electric and diesel trains on the same day or operate trains in regular passenger service and then are directed to move the train to a yard.
Both sides have issued contradictory assessments of negotiations since a session last Thursday, with Janno Lieber, the M.T.A.’s chairman and chief executive officer, claiming progress, and the coalition decrying what it called gimmicks rather than wage increases. The coalition charged that the M.T.A. “offered proposals involving one-time lump sum payments and other gimmicks unacceptable to the coalition of L.I.R.R. rail unions and the 2,500 workers the coalition represents.”
L.I.R.R. workers, their families, and government officials including Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine rallied at the Massapequa L.I.R.R. station on Saturday.
Newsday reported on Monday that Gov. Kathy Hochul said she and state officials are “immersed in the details” of the ongoing negotiations.
The M.T.A. has issued contingency plans in the event of a strike. But they do not include the South Fork Commuter Connection, morning and afternoon trains that originate in Speonk and deliver passengers to and from stations on the South Fork, where “last mile” shuttle service takes them to and from their places of employment. Rather, it encourages commuters to work from home if possible and directs New York City-bound passengers to morning shuttle bus service leaving from Bay Shore, Hempstead Lake State Park, Hicksville, Huntington, Mineola, and Ronkonkoma bound for M.T.A. subway stations in Queens, returning to their place of origin in the afternoon and evening.
A strike will likely result in more vehicles in the daily “trade parade” that clogs eastbound traffic on Montauk Highway on weekday mornings and westbound traffic on weekday afternoons and evenings.
Despite negotiations scheduled to resume yesterday, the coalition planned to assemble and distribute strike picket signs at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 589 headquarters in Patchogue yesterday afternoon.
