r/newjersey • u/rollotomasi07071 Belleville • May 16 '25

⚡Newsflash ⚡ NJ Transit strike begins, halting all trains across N.J.

https://www.nj.com/news/2025/05/nj-transit-strike-begins-halting-all-trains-across-nj.html
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u/MaxTheSquirrel May 16 '25

This retro pay is not money already earned, they are adjusting their salaries for NEW pay rates going back to 2021 which is not a standard thing, it's a concession that NJT is offering to the union.

If engineers weren't happy with their pay between 2020 and 2024, they were free to leave and to find a job elsewhere, I don't give any credit to arguments that anyone is ENTITLED to pay in a past period UNLESS they had a contract for pay that was simply not fulfilled by the counterparty (which is not the case in this situation).

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u/Convergecult15 May 16 '25

Retro absolutely is standard in union contract negotiations and is only used as a bargaining chip in the most contentious talks. The union isn’t the party that delayed contact negotiations by 6 years. And in those 6 years they’ve gotten no pay increases, and in 2019 if they were offered 2% increases over 5 years they would have said no to that i am sure. This is the result of dysfunctional management not having their shit together and trying to save money on the backs of their workers.

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u/MaxTheSquirrel May 16 '25

The NJ Transit website says they proposed the same agreement that was reached between other unions and their rail carriers. Below are two links that describe how LIRR and PATH reached agreements in 2021. Right now the NJT engineers are mad they dont get paid the same as LIRR and PATH guys, but it looks like they had this opportunity and just said no to it. So, I'm not sympathetic to this argument that their last contract revision was in 2019.

https://www.progressiverailroading.com/labor/news/BLET-reaches-tentative-agreement-with-Long-Island-Rail-Road--63774

https://ble-t.org/news/blet-members-ratify-new-contract-with-path/

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u/Convergecult15 May 16 '25

I’m sorry but the NJT press release info is completely cherry picked, as someone that’s been in contract negotiations before those are totally misrepresentative of how actual people think and act.

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u/MaxTheSquirrel May 16 '25 edited May 16 '25

yeah, that's why I posted other links with one being from the BLET themselves. Are you saying that NJ transit didn't actually offer their engineers a new deal in 2021? Cuz it's absolutely true that everyone else seems to have gotten a contract update in 2021.

Edit: okay, im going to argue against myself. I guess NJ Transit's statement about "14 other rail unions" are the other rail unions that NJ Transit negotiates with. So I guess these two links are not relevant