(The Center Square) – Rail service on Long Island is expected to resume Tuesday after New York’s transit agency reached a tentative deal with labor unions, ending a three-day strike that shut down the nation’s largest commuter rail system.
At a Monday night news briefing outside the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Manhattan headquarters, Gov. Kathy Hochul said negotiators reached a deal providing “fair wages” to Long Island Rail Road workers without increasing costs for public transit riders.
“This contract will ensure that 3,500 LIRR employees will be paid fairly for their labor,” Hochul said. “We stood firm for a deal that would not require any additional fair increases or tax increases. Period. Full stop. Got it done.”
Details of the agreement were not released. Hochul said the deal still had to be ratified by the unions’ rank and file membership over the next several days and approved at the next MTA board meeting, scheduled for Wednesday.
Mark Wallace, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Teamsters Rail Conference, said unionized workers will get a pay raise for the first time in four years, and said the final agreement must still be ratified by the union’s rank and file membership.
“Throughout these negotiations, our members stood together for a fair agreement that recognizes the dedication and sacrifices railroad workers make every day while keeping pace with the rising cost of living,” he said in a statement. “This was never about seeking more than what is fair – it was about securing the respect and economic security our members have earned. We appreciate the support and patience of the riding public, and now the final decision rests with the membership.”
Combined, the five unions represent 3,500 members, a majority of the Long Island Rail Road’s unionized workforce. The system is the nation’s largest commuter railroad, with 250,000 daily passengers.
The shutdown was costing the New York region an estimated $61 million a day and lost activity, according to state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. He had warned that the impact of the strike would become more significant on Long Island and New York City with the approach of Memorial Day, summer holidays and the tourism season.
LIRR President Rob Free said Monday night that the system will resume service on four electric-powered lines – the Port Washington, Huntington, Ronkonkoma, and Babylon Branches – beginning at noon Wednesday. Full service will return by 4 p.m. for peak service across all branches, he said.
“We have talked to the labor organizations, and we will both do everything we can, you have our word, to get service back up and running with the great on-time performance we run and the reliability and safety that we provide every single day,” he told reporters.
The negotiations, which started in 2023, broke down last week after both sides were reportedly unable to reach an agreement on pay raises for the current year. Both two sides had agreed on a 9.5% retroactive raise for the first three years of the new contract, but the MTA initially offered a 3% raise for the current year, which the unions rejected.
The Trump administration got involved in September after the unions requested a panel of experts to resolve the dispute. The move temporarily averted a strike, but negotiators still couldn’t reach a deal after months of closed-door negotiations. Hochul had blamed the federal government for cutting short the negotiations.
“The trains will be running, we’re not gonna be raising taxes to cover the cost of an increase for the workers, and we’re not going to raise fares to make accommodations either,” Hochul said. “Those were our objectives; we achieved them.”
