Long Island Rail Road, America’s largest commuter railroad, is on strike

By Chris Isidore, CNN

(CNN) — Transit workers for the Long Island Rail Road, the nation’s largest commuter railroad, are on strike, potentially stranding hundreds of thousands of weekday passengers in the New York City area.

The strike by the five unions representing 3,500 workers, the first at the railroad since 1994, has brought all train traffic to a halt. The unions failed to reach a deal with railroad management on wages and work rules on Friday.

“After two days of round-the-clock negotiations, parties were unable to reach a deal,” said Kevin Sexton, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, and spokesperson for the unions.

The unions are seeking the first raise for their members since 2022, a period that saw some of the highest cost-of-living increases in decades in one of the nation’s most expensive markets. There have been no reports of new talks between the two sides as of late Saturday morning.

The LIRR, like most mass transit systems, has not yet recovered all the ridership it had in 2019 before the pandemic, but is back to about 90% of pre-pandemic levels.

Its fare revenue brought in $636 million last year, or about $2 million per weekday that it stands to lose during the strike. Even the customers with monthly passes will have a prorated share of those fares refunded.

Unions on strike represent engineers, signalmen and machinists. The conductors are not on strike but they are union members and honoring the picket lines. The five unions had been seeking raises in the 4% to 5% range.

Two federal panels that heard arguments from the two sides sided with the union position, according to the unions. Management got close to that offer, but then at the 11th hour demanded the union members accept increased costs for healthcare coverage that the union said was unacceptable.

“The (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) and Gov. Hochul determined that they would rather create frustration and gridlock for thousands of commuters, spend millions on buses during a strike and lose millions in lost revenue rather than settle a contract meant to keep pace with the rising cost of living,” said Nick Peluso, national vice president of the Transportation Communications Union, one of the unions now on strike.

The MTA blamed the union for the failure to reach an agreement.

“For me, it’s become apparent that these unions always intended to strike,” said Janno Lieber, CEO of the MTA. “Their strategy is to inconvenience Long Islanders and try to force the MTA and the State to do a bad deal.”

Struggles for commuters

Commuters now face the prospect of having to drive to work at a time when gas prices have surged and new extra tolls are in place on all cars entering Manhattan’s business district.

While the strike started at 12:01 a.m. ET on Saturday, it will be most severely felt on Monday when nearly 300,000 commuters make their way in and out of the city. The MTA, which operates the railroad, said Friday afternoon that the limited bus service it will offer can accommodate only about 13,000 riders in the morning and another 13,000 in the evening.

The MTA is urging customers to work from home, avoid non-essential travel and give extra time no matter what form of transportation they take into the city.

While weekends have far fewer passengers than weekdays, this weekend was expecting to see an uptick of passengers during off-peak service. The Mets and the Yankees, New York’s two baseball teams, play each other Saturday and Sunday at the Mets’ Citi Field, which is served by the LIRR.

Friday’s last-minute negotiations broke down over a raise in wages.

“We are truly sorry that we’re in this situation. These riders are our friends, our neighbors, they live in our communities. We understand the service that the Long Island Rail Road provides in this region,” Sexton said.

Top officials respond

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a statement Saturday condemning the strike as “reckless” and argued union demands threaten to make fares too high for riders.

“Commuters are dealing with unnecessary dysfunction and thousands of union LIRR workers are forced to go without a paycheck because of the decisions made by a small group of union leaders,” Hochul said, urging the unions and MTA to “return to the table and bargain non-stop until a deal is reached.”

Lieber, of the MTA, said his agency could not agree to the unions’ wage demands.

“We cannot responsibly make a deal that implodes MTA’s budget,” said Lieber. “We refuse to make a deal that puts it on riders and taxpayers to fund outsized wage increases — far beyond what anyone else at the MTA is getting — and for folks who are already the highest-paid railroad workers in the country.”

Railroads operate under a different labor law than most businesses in the country, one that makes it more difficult for unions to go on strike. But the barriers in the law to limit strikes — mediation, cooling-off periods and government panels considering bargaining positions — have all been cleared by the unions. And there is little left that could get the workers back on the job other than a labor deal acceptable to rank-and-file members.

Congress can intervene to broker a deal, as it did in December 2022, when it prevented a national freight railroad strike because it posed a threat to the national economy.

But the nation’s largest commuter railroad doesn’t pose the same risk to the economy as the freight railroads. And Congress didn’t act in 2025 when the engineers’ union at New Jersey Transit, which had 100,000 daily commuters, went on strike for three days.

Hochul, who is up for reelection this November, also targeted the Trump administration, perhaps raising the stakes of the strike on a national scale.

She called the disruption Long Islanders face, “the direct result of reckless actions by the Trump Administration to cut mediation short and push these negotiations toward a strike.”

“For weeks, the MTA has attempted to negotiate in good faith and put multiple fair offers on the table that included meaningful wage increases, but you cannot make a deal if one side refuses to engage in good faith,” Hochul said.

President Donald Trump responded with a post on Truth Social.

“Failed New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, a Dumacrat, just blamed ME for her Long Island Railroad STRIKE, when she knows, full well, that I have NOTHING TO DO WITH IT – never even heard about it until this morning. She just blurted out, ‘it’s President Trump’s fault.’ No, Kathy, it’s your fault, and now looking over the facts, you should not have allowed this to happen. If you can’t solve it, let me know, and I’ll show you how to properly get things done,” Trump posted.

— CNN’s Gloria Pazmino contributed to this report.

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This story has been updated with additional content.