Transit News: LIRR Strike Update

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:01][music] [music] >> It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. Let's talk about this Long Island Railroad strike, making it not a good Monday morning for a lot of people. We're told that negotiations have resumed this morning, just a little while ago. So, we'll take a closer look than you might get in the headlines about what the issues are.

[00:00:28]Also, what some of the underlying structural things. Have you wondered about these like, why does the LIRR have five separate unions? Why is just this branch of the MTA on strike? That is, do Metro-North or New York City bus and subway workers all have different pay and work rules? They're all MTA employees. The MTA runs all of those.

[00:00:47]And here's one way the Long Island Railroad strike is becoming an election year issue. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, who is also the Nassau County Executive, so this is local to him, is calling on Governor Hochul to suspend the congestion pricing toll to drive into Midtown while the strike is going on for a little relief, he says, for the people who do generally choose public transportation but don't have that option during the strike. The governor says that's beyond her powers under the law. Our transportation [snorts] editor Clayton Gusew is with us and we'll check in with transportation reporter Stephen Nissen, who is at one usually very busy Long Island Railroad hub, which is busy in a different way this morning. Hey Clayton, I know you're covering this around the clock right now, so thanks for giving us some time on the show. Hi. Yeah, hey Brian, how you doing?

[00:01:34]And listeners, we can take some different threads of calls or texts from you. First of all, any striking workers listening right now? Want to call in and explain to the public why you think this is in their interest or worth their inconvenience right now? Striking workers, you're invited. Make your case.

[00:01:53]212-433- WNYC call or text 212-433-9692.

[00:02:01]Anyone who usually uses the Long Island Rail Road but can't right now, you're invited to tell us how you're compensating. Are you working from home and that's why you're available to call in? Are you stuck in your car in extra heavy traffic somewhere and that's why you're available to listen cuz you can't work from home and maybe the shuttle buses don't go where you need them to.

[00:02:22]What do you think of the strike? Or give us a real-time traffic report. You can do that, too, from the LIE or the Northern or Southern State or wherever you are. 212-433- WNYC-433-9692.

[00:02:36]Or anyone with a comment or a question about the Long Island Rail Road strike, an opinion, or a question about something you'd like to better understand. 212-433- WNYC-433-9692.

[00:02:51]So, Clayton, what's the latest on negotiations? Are they happening and if so, >> where? Yeah, they're back at the table this morning at 2 Broadway. That's downtown. That's MTA headquarters. You know, on on late Friday night or they had for weeks and months telegraphed this, you know, mark or May 16th deadline. Right at midnight, they walk out of negotiations at 2 Broadway. The strike was on. They've been at you know, they on Saturday and Sunday they were saying they you know, there was back and forth as to when they were going to go back to the table.

[00:03:19]There's been some talks over the weekends but they're these five unions are back at the table with the MTA this morning. And they're really from what we understand, the big hang-up right now is just kind of about less than a percentage point, maybe a percentage point in how much they're going to get a raise in the fourth year of the fourth year contract. Part of this context too is that they haven't had a contract for almost three years. So, they're looking for a four-year contract. They'll kind of expire next year. Once this is settled, these workers are going to get a tremendous amount of retroactive pay but they're really hung up on this last year, um, much they're going to get a raise. They were previously asking, the unions were previously asking for a 5% raise during that fourth year of the deal. Now they've come down a little bit. That's what we know, but a lot of this is kind of private negotiating behind, you know, closed doors, dark smoky rooms. Is it just pay or also pay plus work rules or benefits? Can you run any of that down for us if there is that?

[00:04:15]>> Well, we can at least give you the context of what what has been discussed.

[00:04:19]We don't actually know like what they're what they're negotiating over, but there are a lot of work rules that the MTA is very bothered by, right? A very notable one is that, um, MTA or Long Island Rail Road crews will get or locomotive engineers will get double pay, two days pay if they if they operate an electric train and a diesel train on the same day, right? In different areas. Um, they'll also get extra pay if they run uh, double pay if they run like special service, like special service to events like, you know, extra Mets games or something like that in some cases. So, those are some very those are the very, you know, kind of controversial areas that the MTA says just blows up their budget. Um, there's also the MTA's been pushing to or was previously pushing to get changes to work rules that allow ticket clerks to do kind of change their line of work, right? Most ticketing is on the apps, it's going more digital. So, they're saying, why why do we need to pay all these ticket clerks? We don't really know what the status of those work rule negotiations are, how this is going to shake out, what it's going to look like, how things are going to change, but those were all kind of within the larger context of negotiations as we as we led up to this strike. Stephen Nissen is also with us, transportation reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. He's at the Hicksville station. Am I right, Stephen?

[00:05:34]You're still at Hicksville? I heard you there a little while ago.

[00:05:37]I'm still at Hicksville. I've been here since about 6:00 a.m.

[00:05:41]And that's for people who don't know the system where the Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma branches both have a major stop. So, we're a little past normal rush hour now. Is there a scene there at Hicksville station with commuters and buses or anything?

[00:05:56]Well, Brian, at 9:00 a.m. the shuttle buses stop running for the morning. So, they started about 4:30 a.m.

[00:06:05]Uh and they they were going pretty frequently, like every 10-15 minutes the buses would leave. So, nobody felt like they missed a bus. They were They were going pretty steadily throughout the morning. But, that's done. So, there have been a few stragglers who showed up who thought they could catch a later one.

[00:06:21]Uh and they've been directed to the nice buses, uh the Nassau County public bus system to take them as close to Jamaica as humanly possible.

[00:06:29]Uh I think there is a bus that goes there, but God knows how long it's going to take. Um but, the other scene here are the workers on strike. Uh they've set up like an encampment. I don't know if you can hear cars honking, but like they're getting a They're getting a lot of support out here, at least uh you know, according to the honking cars. And there's dozens and dozens of folks.

[00:06:48]They've got signs. They've got uh a barbecue going. They've got some tunes.

[00:06:53]And it definitely looks like they're here for the long haul. I think they've actually been here since Saturday, like Clayton was saying. The strike actually started Friday Friday or Saturday morning at midnight.

[00:07:02]Wait, when people honk at me, they're usually not telling me they love me. Are you sure the honkers are in support of the strike? Well, that's It's It It sounds like a friendly honk, and everyone starts cheering. So, it seems like at least uh they're happy. But, if you're in a car, I guess you're less concerned about the strike because uh you know, you're driving somewhere where it's Folks A lot of folks here are pretty frustrated that they have to take a bus to the subway in the morning.

[00:07:27]What are the strikers chanting, if anything, or do they have signs that put it in any interesting ways?

[00:07:34]Um you know, they say equal pay for equal work. I'm not quite exactly sure how that uh relates here with the strike.

[00:07:42]Uh they want fair wages is what they're saying.

[00:07:46]They're saying, "What do we want?" Uh, "Justice" is what they're chanting this very second. Um, so I suppose justice in the terms of fair wages is is what they've been asking for this whole time, what they consider fair wages.

[00:07:59]How's the vibe among the commuters you've been talking to? Like how supportive or resentful of the strikers, if you have a sense?

[00:08:07]Well, you know, to quote you, Brian, you know, my unscientific survey is that it's seems fairly divided, I guess. Uh, the number one word I heard from folks this morning was stressful. The morning is stressful trying to figure out how to get to work, how to get home, how to juggle all of life's responsibilities without having, you know, the railroad that folks have relied on. Um, but you know, there's some sympathy for the workers and there's a lot of folks who are not sympathetic at all. They say that, you know, these guys need to get back to work. They're already paid more than I am. Um, you know, we rely on this. This is ridiculous. Um, and some frustration with the MTA as well that they're not just giving these guys what they want. Uh, so I would say it is somewhat divided, but I think, you know, it's 6:00 a.m. when you're trying to get into Manhattan for work, there's not a lot of sympathy for striking workers.

[00:08:58]Let's take a phone call. Here's Daphne in Queens, which as some of you may know or may not know is geographically on Long Island. So is Brooklyn. Daphne, you're on WNYC. Hi.

[00:09:10]Good morning, Brian. God bless you. It's lovely to talk to you and you're a listener.

[00:09:15]And great to have you.

[00:09:17]Do you have a stake in this or a question?

[00:09:21]Um, I I guess I have a concerned opinion.

[00:09:25]Um, as as I was stating and I I you know, was able to have the time to do the math. So I was watching the news yesterday. I think it was ABC news or NBC news and they were saying that the LIRR is losing approximately 70 million a day um from their employees being on strike.

[00:09:45]And so, you know, now that I have a calculator now, I most I was able to find out So, if they're losing $70 million a day, that means that for the year, you know, that that that profit that you're intaking is 21,900 million.

[00:10:02]And so, once again, now I have the time Sorry, a little off topic.

[00:10:07]Um I was able to find out So, the LIRR, um they have about 7,000 to 7,500 um employees. And so, with me doing, you know, I guess my my own set of math, you can afford to pay these people, you know, this this this what came out. So, 21,900 million, dividing that by the 7,000 employees or the 7 7 to 7,500 employees, that's 2.92.

[00:10:37]So, now that I'm factoring that on the the million scale, you mean to tell me you can't afford to pay, you know, $2.92 more? I mean, even though you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Right. I understand. And Daphne, I'm going to leave it there. Uh credit to Daphne for crunching the numbers as as an involved citizen. Um Clayton, well, let uh um you know, I read critiques of the union this morning.

[00:11:05]They kind of go to some of the things that she's raising, and she's obviously in in support uh of the union. But, the New York Post editorial page and the Washington Post editorial page, which now falls into the conservative category, the Washington Post argues that the union is striking largely over quote a bullheaded unwillingness to negotiate over work rules that make the system woefully inefficient. So, how much does your reporting back up the notion that there are work rules that make the system inefficient in a way that thinking about Daphne's number crunching makes it more expensive for riders or for taxpayers and and that that's unnecessary. Yeah, I mean there's a few ways to go into this, Brian. I mean I mean Long Island Rail Road is a some of these MTA and MTA Chairman Lieber is you know as these labor negotiation negotiations have broken down has really taken use some strong language on the on the workforce and the unions you kind of haven't seen in the past and he's pointed out a couple things, right?

[00:12:10]He's pointed out that they're among the highest paid public servants in the state. He's pointed out that there are a lot of people that make a tremendous amount of money in overtime. And part of the I think a big part of the context here, Brian, is that what muddied the waters in the last decade is these repeated kind of steady drumbeat of overtime fraud scandals. You might remember 7 years ago it was heavily covered across the city. There was a group of five or six Long Island Rail Road workers who were indicted for you know lying about their timesheets, hiding their phones in cases to so that their location couldn't be tracked.

[00:12:47]Reporting that they were working 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. Some of them were the highest paid employees at the MTA and they got indicted. Some of them went to prison. They were still allowed to keep their pensions. A lot of this is a lot of these a lot of this you know overtime fraud is it was about you know because your pension at the MTA and LIRR is based on your last year of service.

[00:13:09]So, they were really boosting their pay to try and cash in on a big pension and and even in the last year we've seen an MTA Inspector General report where there was a system of Long Island Rail Road employees cloning their swipe time cards so that they could scan each other in and steal time and cheat time. So, all that kind of is muddy the water for the MTA. It's left blood in the water. It's made them very upset and a lot of people inside the MTA feel that these unions have aided and harbored fraudsters. On the other side of this, right? That's a small As far as we know, as far as like that's a relatively small percentage of the workforce. A lot of these workers just want to you know, are honest, want to go punch a clock, and they want to get, you know, a raise that's you know, keeping up with or maybe bit ahead of the aggressive inflation rates here. And I think that the other side of this, right, is that the Long Island Railroad is it's a very you know, it doesn't it's subsidized. It's not like a money-making railroad like like it was a century ago.

[00:14:08]But but it's a very it's the busiest it's the highest ridership public commuter railroad in the country. And and it was on the brink of failure coming out of COVID.

[00:14:17]It's the ridership was down. There was a lot of federal aid coming out. They needed to get riders back. They were really struggling. Governor Hochul has really repeatedly pointed out that she really flexed a lot of money into the into the MTA and the Long Island Railroad. Flexed a lot of subsidies into helping bring service back. And ridership is really rebounded. And Hochul is saying very publicly, I just spent all this money to get this railroad back on stable financial footing for the riders. I don't want to lose any of that economic progress or any of these this budget stabilizing progress by giving these unions a very a very sweetheart deal. So, that's I think kind of core to this is like there are people who, you know, to their to their credit do like do great work out there and are demanding, you know, a raise against these high rates of inflation.

[00:15:06]But there's also all these other problems that have really muddied the waters and kind of come to a head with this strike.

[00:15:12]And Stephen, kind of the opposite of what we heard from Daphne who supports the union after crunching the numbers and what they make. Listen to rights, I would like to understand the claim that some Long Island Railroad Union members and leaders make more money than the governor. How is that possible? writes this listener. First of all, is that factual?

[00:15:31]Uh we'd have to check the latest stats.

[00:15:33]Maybe Clayton has it on the top of his head.

[00:15:35]>> Yeah, I think there have been years where it's happened for sure. Yeah, I think the governor makes about 250 and there's some workers that make uh more than a you know, more than that and more than 100k in um in a overtime. Two for for the record, the the MTA chairman makes more than the president of the United States.

[00:15:51]Right.

[00:15:53]Um well, this goes to some of the structural issues that I mentioned in the intro. Uh so Stephen, if you know, why is just this branch of the MTA on strike? That is, do Metro-North or New York City bus and subway workers all have different pay, different work rules? They're all MTA employees, the MTA runs all of those. So why is it just this and how different are, you know, Long Island Railroad pay and benefits structures from other MTA transit workers?

[00:16:23]Uh well, I mean they're all different unions, right? So they all have different work rules, different requirements, but this particular, you know, these five unions uh are currently and they only represent really more than half of the Long Island Railroad workforce, but you can't really run the railroad without them. Uh but, you know, the subway and bus workers, they're under the Transport Workers uh uh United, TWU Local 100. And by the way, they're also having contract negotiations. Um but it's different rules cuz the Long Island Railroad's a commuter railroad, so uh they're actually not governed by the Taylor Law, which the other uh the TWU is. So that's why subway and bus workers are not likely to go on strike, it would be against the law, but these guys are uh they fall under the you know, the national railroad system. So uh and that's because of long-standing history, right?

[00:17:16]>> Yeah, I can I can just just a point a a point of context that's kind of interesting. I mean, this is a basically a product of how the MTA was cobbled together in the '60s and '70s, right?

[00:17:25]The MTA was like the MTA was kind of formed after the state bought and bailed out the Long Island Railroad in '65 and then took Triborough away from Robert Moses and combined it all with New York City Transit Authority, right? So, you had these three kind of disparate agencies all coming in then they formed Metro-North when they, you know, took over the New York Central commuter lines and formed a partnership with Connecticut to kind of run the New Haven lines. So, you kind of have a It's a really Frankensteined agency that has all these very old unions, right? That have been that, you know, date back to a long time ago. And even if you look, you know, what Metro-North is today is what the New York Central was, you know, the the Vanderbilt Railroad. What Long Island Railroad is today is what used to be owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, right? It's in That's what it runs in the Penn Station and it's through these river tunnels.

[00:18:15]So, it's like a lot of the product of why these are kind of all these disparate unions, all these kind of different work rules predate the existence of the MTA and really date back to the days of private railroad tycoons when these made a lot of money. When these were profitable enterprises that that, you know, then unions in turn responded by forming and and taking their cut, taking their piece of these businesses a long time ago.

[00:18:41]Um Bruce Blakeman's proposal to suspend congestion pricing while the strike is on. Stephen, do you know what the governor's response to that, Governor Hochul's response?

[00:18:51]Obviously, they're running against each other in the election for governor right now.

[00:18:56]Right.

[00:18:56]>> I believe she said it would just be like technically illegal. They can't just shut it off at a whim. There's like, you know, the federal government sort of regulated and we went through great uh exertions to get congestion pricing up and running and even the federal government tried to sued to stop it, tried sued to stop it and lost. Um so, it's not like a switch they can just flip on and off at a whim.

[00:19:21]Uh and that would probably be an abuse of the rules of congestion pricing. So, that's not going to happen. I will say on my drive out, I I can't say I drive too often out to Long Island reverse commute, but it was backed up bumper to bumper. Although, it may be like that most days going into the city.

[00:19:36]Yeah.

[00:19:37]Uh I must say I know some uh politicians um who issue executive orders without worrying so much whether they're legal, but I think that's a different segment. Let last couple of questions, Clayton. Has Mayor Adams weighed in and all? You know, when the building workers union had authorized a strike recently, and when the nurses were on strike, he voiced support. And this affects the city as well as the island. Has the mayor weighed in? Not yet. He's having a presser right now, actually. We have a reporter Liz Kim up there, so we hope to hope to press him on that. But, couple points of context.

[00:20:12]His um you know, Claire Valdez who's who's running for Congress um in Brooklyn and Queens who Mondaire has endorsed, she joined the picket line with the workers at Penn Station, very supporting them. But, I think Mondaire's making he's he's got to be careful here, right? Because he doesn't want to alienate Hochul, especially when the state budget's up in the air. A state budget that is going to balance the city's budget and needs to, and um and kind of has looming over Mondaire's head. He doesn't want to alienate the governor, and this is a very sensitive strike for the governor, especially if she's in an election year. Um so, I I would estimate that he is being very mindful about how he wants to pick a side here, because he's very you know, he came into office very pro-labor, very pro-trade like public sector and private sector labor.

[00:20:56]Like you said, you saw him joining picket lines with the nurses and building workers and others. But, I I you know, if so far we've seen if Claire Valdez is maybe a proxy for Mondaire, maybe just cuz she's a DSA-affiliated candidate, but so far we haven't seen Mondani really chime in in a meaningful way about this strike other than telling people what they're kind of transportation alternatives are. And the governor says if they say yes to all the union's demands they'll have to raise fares more than the usual schedule. So Clayton, 20 seconds, do you have a best guess how or when, mostly when, this will end?

[00:21:29]>> Well, if you're looking at back of the napkin math, the unions are losing money, right? They're not getting paid right now. So if it breaks down to a percentage point that they're apart, you know, you get to three, four, five days in, you start to lose some of those gains. The MTA chair and Governor Hochul pointed that out over the weekend. So that's where the kind of rubber hits the road. You saw the nurses go on strike for a very long time and they didn't that they might have taken a hit on that because they lost all the all those lost wages, you know, that builds up into percentage points. When you and it takes a while to make that back. So I I would think given that math that we're not going to see this strike on too long.

[00:22:01]New Jersey Transit went on strike this time last year. It was three days. We're on the third day here in Long Island.

[00:22:07]WNYC transportation editor Clayton Gouta and transportation reporter live from Hicksville, Steven Nissen. Thanks Clayton. Thanks Steven. Thanks Brian.

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