Latest news with #KrisKolluri
CBS News
21-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
New Jersey Transit trains back on track after strike, bringing customers a sigh of relief
New Jersey Transit riders happy to see trains back on track after strike New Jersey Transit riders happy to see trains back on track after strike New Jersey Transit riders happy to see trains back on track after strike NJ Transit is back on track — literally. Trains are up and running and have resumed their normal schedules following the first rail strike in decades in New Jersey. NJ Transit and the union representing engineers reached a tentative agreement on Sunday night. The strike started on Friday, and service was halted for four days, affecting the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on the system. "I am so pleased that the union and NJ Transit reached an agreement. Now it goes to the union to ratify, and it will then come to the NJ Transit board," said Kris Kolluri, NJ Transit president and CEO. Many passengers who spoke to CBS News Philadelphia said they are happy the strike is over because their backup plans weren't nearly as convenient or were too expensive. "Car was not an option for me. Amtrak was kind of expensive, so when this actually broke and got settled, I am like, 'This is so great, I get to enjoy the day,'" said Frank Giffone. He said he got tickets through a lottery to go to New York to see the Old City Hall train station in Manhattan for his birthday. "When this transit strike came around and popped up last week, I was like, 'Oh great. How am I going to get to Manhattan?'" he said Others said they are relieved travel will be smoother this week. "I am planning a trip to the airport this coming week, and I was a little nervous it was going to affect getting to the airport via public transportation," said Mackenzie Mueller from Washington.
CBS News
20-05-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Watch Live: NJ Transit service resumes today after strike officially ends
NJ Transit service resumes Tuesday after the agency reached a tentative agreement with the engineers union to end their strike. NJ Transit President and CEO Kris Kolluri is expected to give an update at 6:45 a.m. Watch live on CBS News New York. NJ Transit strike update Although the strike ended Sunday night, hundreds of trains and miles of tracks had to be inspected before service was fully restored. Officials said the process takes up to 24 hours. Service had been halted since last Friday, impacting hundreds of thousands of riders. Government sources tell CBS News New York the deal with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) will not increase fares, at least for the next few years. Both sides are saying little about the deal until it's ratified in a month. The union's general manager said in a statement it "boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month and beyond where we were when NJ Transit's managers walked away from the table Thursday evening." The NJ Transit board will also have to approve the deal after union members vote on it. Check back soon for the latest updates on this developing story.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NJ Transit strike to end, train service to resume Tuesday
The Brief The NJ Transit strike is coming to an end after three days. Engineers and NJ Transit were able to reach an agreement on a new contract. Regular service will resume Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. NEW JERSEY - NJ Transit and the engineers' union reached a tentative agreement Sunday on a new contract, ending the three-day transit strike -- and an anticipated week of headache for 100,000 daily riders. What we know The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen initially announced regular train service would begin again Monday, but moments later, union spokesperson Jamie Horwitz said NJ Transit informed them that it would be Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. instead. This 24-hour period gives NJ Transit time for infrastructure inspection and preparation. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said those who can should work from home on Monday. NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said park and rides and additional bus service will be available Monday. Click here for information on alternative routes. The strike, which began Friday, marked the state's first transit walkout in over 40 years, forcing commuters to seek alternative transportation methods such as buses, cars, taxis, and boats, or to stay home. The backstory The primary issue was achieving a wage increase for engineers without causing financial strain on the transit agency. The union's general chairman, Tom Haas, stated that the agreement boosts hourly pay beyond previous proposals and was reached without significant budget issues or fare increases. The strike highlighted the need for competitive wages, as engineers have been leaving for better-paying jobs at Amtrak and Long Island Railroad. The union had sought an average salary increase from $113,000 to $170,000, while NJ Transit leadership disputed these figures, citing average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with some engineers earning over $200,000. What's next The deal will be submitted for ratification by the national union and requires approval from the New Jersey Transit board at its next meeting on June 11. The Source This article includes reporting from the Associated Press, New Jersey officials and FOX 5 NY's Meredith Gorman.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NJ Transit strike comes to an end with agreement between union and managers
The New Jersey Transit rail strike will end after the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and NJ Transit managers reached a tentative agreement Sunday. Trains will resume running on their regular schedules Tuesday, NJ Transit President and CEO Kris Kolluri said, ending the first strike at NJ Transit in over 40 years. Kolluri urged commuters to work from home Monday until full service picks up again Tuesday. NJ Transit buses will run as normal Monday. Kolluri said the company has a lot to do to ready the railway for safe passage after no use, including checking the railroads, pre-positioning equipment, conducting safety inspections and calling engineers back into work. 'This is an extraordinarily complex operation,' Kolluri said. 'We will never compromise the safety of our riders. For us, it is better to get it right and do it methodically than to rush and try to meet some artificial deadline.' New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy lauded transit managers' efforts at the negotiating table, saying he thought the deal 'landed in a really good place.' 'They have poured hour after countless hour into reaching an agreement that is both fair to NJ Transit's employees while also being affordable for our state's commuters and taxpayers,' he said at a news conference Sunday evening. The locomotive union said the strike, which began at 12:01 a.m. Friday, was a result of pay disputes, as 450 of its members who work for NJ Transit walked off the job. It brought the country's third-largest transit system, which services 350,000 riders, to a halt. It shut down NJ Transit trains, which carry around 100,000 riders each day. Talks between the union and NJ Transit officials had continued through the weekend. The terms of the deal now be sent to the 450 union members who work for the company. A ratification vote by the union and by NJ Transit is expected to follow, the union said. Tom Haas, the union's general chairman at NJ Transit, said the agreement would boost hourly pay higher than the April proposal by NJ Transit, which the union rejected, and higher still than where the proposal had stood Thursday night. The union has said its members were the lowest-paid locomotive engineers at any major passenger railroad in the country. It said NJ Transit engineers haven't had raises in the last five years. 'We're just looking for some sort of equal pay for equal work,' a striking locomotive engineer, who would not give NBC News his name under the union's rules, said Friday. The man said Amtrak and the Long Island Railroad pay around $10 an hour more. Murphy said the offer to the union before the strike was pay similar to that of engineers for the Long Island Railroad. Mark Wallace, the locomotive union's national president, said the union had 'the full support of our national union, as well as the Teamsters.' 'We also appreciated the outpouring of support we received from NJ Transit passengers and the labor community who know that NJ Transit's locomotive engineers keep the trains moving and went years without a raise,' Wallace said. He also thanked Congress for not interfering with the strike, which it is able to do under the Railway Labor Act. 'This should be a lesson for other railroad disputes. Nothing would have been gained by kicking the can down the road. Allowing strikes to happen encourages settlement rather than stonewalling,' Wallace added. Late Thursday, before the strike deadline, Murphy and Kolluri said they wanted a fair agreement for the union but added that they couldn't agree to a deal that might have been better than those of other unions in the NJ Transit system, because it would cause those unions to demand the same. 'It turns from something that is maybe a single-digit million or a low double-digit million fiscal reality into a nine-digit fiscal reality — and that's something that NJ Transit can't bear,' Murphy said at the article was originally published on
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New Jersey Transit reaches tentative deal with engineers union that could end strike
(CNN) – Negotiators for New Jersey Transit and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), the union representing 450 striking engineers, have reached a tentative labor agreement that would bring an end to the three-day strike, according to the union. New Jersey Transit did not have a comment on the union's statement, but CEO Kris Kolluri and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy have scheduled a news conference for Sunday at 7:45 p.m. ET. The engineers are due back at work on Monday. But a spokesman for NJ Transit, while not commenting on the settlement, said that the trains were not expected to run until Tuesday because of procedures that need to be followed before they can start rolling again. The union initially said the trains would be running on Monday. Terms of the tentative deal were not immediately available. The agreement still needs to be ratified by the majority of rank-and-file members for the threat of a resumption of the strike to be put to rest. A previous vote on an earlier tentative agreement failed with 87% of members voting no. The strike that started Friday has had the potential to greatly disrupt the work plans of around 100,000 regular customers of the nation's third-largest commuter railroad, as well as businesses across the New York metropolitan region. It also had the potential to inconvenience fans of Beyoncé, who has five concerts beginning Thursday evening at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, just 10 miles from Midtown Manhattan. 'While I won't get into the exact details of the deal reached, I will say that the only real issue was wages and we were able to reach an agreement that boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month and beyond where we were when NJ Transit's managers walked away from the table Thursday evening,' said Tom Haas, the head of the union's unit that represents the NJ Transit engineers. 'We also were able to show management ways to boost engineers' wages that will help NJT with retention and recruitment, without causing any significant budget issue or requiring a fare increase.' The two sides had both said on Friday that they had been close to a deal to give engineers their first raise since 2019. The union said they needed a deal that would bring them into parity with engineers at nearby rail systems, including Amtrak as well as commuter lines serving the Philadelphia market, the suburbs north of New York City and Long Island. They said they are losing too many members to those competing railroads without wage parity. The number of engineers at the railroad has fallen by 10% just since the start of the year, according to BLET. But Murphy and Kolluri insisted that they wanted a contract that gave the engineers a fair wage hike. They said meeting the union's wage demands would trigger 'me too' clauses in the contracts of 14 other unions at the commuter service, which allow unions that have already reached labor deals with the railroad to see their pay raises increase to match whatever the engineers get in their deal. Murphy and Kolluri insist that the agency could not afford to do that. But BLET president Mark Wallace insisted the union had presented a way to give his members the wage increases they were demanding without triggering the 'me too' clauses in the other union deals. Railroads operate under an arcane century-old federal law, the Railway Labor Act, that controls labor relations at railroads and airlines, greatly limiting the union's ability to go on strike. Even when members of a union reject a contract, as has happened in this case, they can be ordered to stay on the job and accept the terms of the deal through an act of Congress. That's what happened in December 2022, when Congress voted in favor of a deal rejected by the majority of the more than 100,000 union members who work at the nation's four major freight railroads. But Congress had shown no intention to act in the case of a single commuter railroad. While Congress has not allowed the nation's freight railroads to strike for more than a few hours, there have been numerous commuter rail strikes that have stretched on for weeks, even months, without Congressional action. Without Congress acting to end the strike, the state and New Jersey Transit were under pressure to reach a quick deal to get the engineers back to work and commuters back on trains. Back in 1983, New Jersey Transit was on strike for one month. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority also went on strike in the 1980s for 108 days. Metro North, which is the commuter line serving the suburbs north of New York, was on strike for 42 days, and the Long Island Rail Road stopped for 11 days. BLET's Wallace said Friday the union hoped that Congress does not take any action this time. 'I hope their stance is they're going to stay out of our fight,' he told CNN while on the picket line outside of New York's Penn Station on Friday morning. 'When two people get in a fight on the street, you walk by it.' This is a developing story and will be updated.
