New York — Commuters in the New York City suburbs faced major challenges on car, bus and subway routes to get to work on Monday after a strike on the Long Island Rail Road that led to close The country’s busiest rail system has entered its third day.
Unions representing rail workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, which runs the tracks, negotiated through most of Sunday, concluding their talks around 1 a.m., but failed to reach an agreement, despite pressure from the National Mediation Board and New York Governor Kathy Hochul. A trade union spokesman said negotiators returned to the negotiating table early Monday.
Katie Dolgo, who teaches first-graders in Manhattan, said it actually took her just an hour to travel from Long Island to Queens, as more commuters diverted to the area’s already crowded roads. But her biggest concern was getting home.
“I have to get my son to nursery by 5:30. It will take longer to get home. I am a teacher, and I will get off work at 1:30,” she said.
The protesters left early.
“We’re just asking for a reasonable cost of living adjustment to our wages,” Byron Lee, a locomotive engineer, said outside Penn Station in midtown Manhattan. “People think you don’t deserve it.”
The LIRR serves hundreds of thousands of passengers living along a 118-mile (190 km) land mass that includes Brooklyn, New York City’s Queens, and the Hamptons, a summer playground for the rich and famous near its eastern edge. Railroads have long provided a relief to commuters from clogged highways at rush hour.
Most of its riders live outside New York City in two counties home to nearly three million people.
The railways and workers were closed He went on strike It’s 12:01 a.m. Saturday after five unions representing about half of their workforce walked out of the business for the first time in three decades.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the Transportation Communications Union said in a statement Sunday that the workers “are not asking for special treatment — they are simply struggling to keep up with the New York area’s high costs of living after years without a raise.”
It was the unions and the MTA Negotiating a new contract since 2023But talks faltered over salaries and health care. The Trump administration intervened in September after unions requested the appointment of a panel of experts, but was still unable to reach an agreement.
At a news conference on Sunday, Hochul said workers would lose every dollar they would earn with a new contract by continuing to strike for three days.
MTA President Janno Lieber also urged a quick solution.
“We’re moving in a positive direction but we have to finish it,” Lieber told WABC-TV.
The first to be affected by the strike — the LIRR’s first since a two-day strike in 1994 — were many sports fans who wanted to watch a Yankees-Mets battle or a Knicks playoff game at Madison Square Garden, which is located directly above the Penn Station Railroad Center in Manhattan.
Federal law makes it extremely difficult for railroad workers to walk out, and even allows Congress to block a strike, but lawmakers have not intervened as they did with the country. Freight railways in 2022.
Potential passengers were greeted by train departure boards that listed ghost trains marked “No Passengers” rather than arriving trains listed by destination.
Essential workers among nearly 250,000 weekday LIRR riders boarded buses into the city from six locations on Long Island starting at 4 a.m. Monday. The evening journey starts at rush hour from 3pm to 7pm
Hochul, a Democrat, blamed the Trump administration for cutting off mediation in September and pushing unions on strike. Trump, a Republican, said on his Truth Social platform that he had nothing to do with the incident.
“No, Cathy, it’s your fault, and now looking at the facts, you shouldn’t have let this happen,” Trump said.
Hochul urged companies and agencies that employ workers from Long Island to allow them to work from home whenever possible.
“It is impossible to completely replace LIRR service. So, starting Monday, I am asking regular riders who can work from home to do so. Please do so,” she said.
The MTA said the unions’ initial demands for higher salaries would result in significant price increases and would be disproportionate to the wages of other union workers.
The unions, which represent locomotive engineers, mechanics, signalmen and others, said more significant raises were warranted to help workers keep pace with inflation and rising costs of living. ___
McCormack reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writers Ted Shaffrey and Joseph Frederick in New York; Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed.