Long Island NY – Six hundred locomotive engineers employed by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) received ballots in the mail from their national union seeking authorization to strike the nation’s busiest commuter railroad.
LIRR’s locomotive engineers, members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), have been without a pay raise for over three years, the last coming on April 16, 2022. The contract dispute has been in mediation since February 2024.
The BLET is bargaining in a coalition alongside the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS), the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and the Transportation Communications Union (TCU). The coalition represents more than half of the unionized workforce at LIRR.
“We are only asking for a fair contract — one that provides modest wage gains, or at the very least, maintains real wages,” said Gil Lang, General Chairman for the BLET’s LIRR engineers. “Our members would not ratify anything short of that.”
NMB released the coalition from mediation on August 18, triggering a 30-day cooling off period under the Railway Labor Act. At the end of the cooling off period, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, or one of the parties to the dispute, could request that the Trump administration intervene and form a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to help avert a strike
