By Shubham Kalia and Mihika Sharma
May 16 (Reuters) – About 3,500 workers at New York’s Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) on Saturday went on strike for the first time in 32 years after failing to reach a wage agreement, halting the busiest commuter rail system in the United States, according to a union statement.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) confirmed the suspension of the service on its website.
The LIRR serves nearly 300,000 passengers daily and the strike comes ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters union said in a statement that the strike was launched by a group of five unions. It said the workers had gone three years without raises during the bargaining process.
SEVERE CONGESTION AND DELAYS EXPECTED
“This strike would not have happened if the MTA and LIRR offered our members the reasonable terms the government recommended multiple times,” Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen President Mark Wallace said.
“We hope LIRR gets serious soon to avoid further unnecessary disruptions for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. They know where to find us when they’re ready: on the streets.”
Nick Peluso, national vice president for the striking Transportation Communications Union, said that the offers differed by roughly a 1% difference in wages, according to the Associated Press.
The MTA’s website said its leaders would continue to negotiate with the unions to resolve the strike.
The agency asked commuters to work from home when possible, and said the shutdown would cause severe congestion and delays.
It will provide limited shuttle buses on weekdays for essential workers and those who cannot work from home.
“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,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
Hochul, who is seeking re-election later this year, urged the parties to return to the bargaining table.
President Donald Trump blamed Hochul for the strike and said she should not have allowed it to happen.
“If you can’t solve it, let me know, and I’ll show you how to properly get things done,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
MTA CEO Janno Lieber said it could not make a deal that implodes its budget, but added that the last rejected offer gave the unions “everything they said they wanted in terms of pay.”
Trump signed an executive order in January to appoint a second emergency board to conduct mediation to avert an LIRR work stoppage after the unions asked him to intervene.
(Reporting by Mihika Sharma and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Angela Christy M; Editing by Tom Hogue, Kirsten Donovan and Louise Heavens)
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