NY Transit Strike Threat Leaves State With Little Legal Recourse

A potential strike among Long Island Rail Road workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority leaves federal and local leaders with few legal options to combat a potentially crippling work stoppage in the nation’s largest city.

A coalition of unions representing about 3,500 LIRR workers said they intend to strike starting May 16 if the parties don’t reach a deal, potentially stopping service on the busiest commuter rail in the US.

The strike threat comes after two failed rounds of failed federal mediationthrough Presidential Emergency Boards. Unlike most industries, the LIRR unions are governed by the Railway Labor Act, which sets strict requirements and time lines for workers to authorize a strike. Once unions meet the legal threshold to walk off the job, local officials have few legal options to get the strikers back to work absent making a deal, except for going to Congress, labor observers said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) oversees the MTA, but authority officials are running the contract talks.

In its hundred-year history, the Railway Labor Act has been “effective at leading parties to voluntary settlements of their disputes,” said Aaron Markel, a partner at Jones Day. A strike is “an absolute last resort that the RLA is essentially designed to avoid.”

Unions tend to be on strong legal footing once they’ve exhausted all of the requirements of the RLA to walk off the job, said Michael Duff, a law professor at St. Louis University.

Rail unions are also permitted to engage in tactics like intermittent striking and secondary picketing that are prohibited under the National Labor Relations Act, he added.

“It’s harder to get to strike under the RLA, but once you do get to strike, there’s probably more disruption that can lawfully be undertaken than is true under the NLRA,” Duff said.

Strike Details

The unions are asking for a 5% wage increase for this year. The MTA on Wednesday offered a 3% raise starting in June along with a one-time lump sum payment equaling a 1.5% salary bump. The union rejected that offer, saying they wanted salary increases, not one-time payments.

Both parties have agreed to a combined 9.5% retroactive wage increase over three years. The most recent contract became amendable in 2023, and LIRR workers haven’t had a raise in nearly four years.

Unlike NLRA, the RLA imposes exhaustive mediation requirements and mandatory cooling off periods before a union is legally allowed to strike.

The MTA and the unions have participated in two Presidential Emergency Boards but have yet to reach a final agreement. The last panel’s final report on March 16 determined that the union’s proposal was the “most reasonable offer.”

The most recent required “cooling off” period ends Saturday at midnight, meaning the unions can then choose to go on strike.

“If there is a strike by these coalition unions at the Long Island Railroad, that’s going to equate to a complete and total shutdown of service,” said Kevin Sexton, national vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainman, one of the unions representing the LIRR workers. “They cannot bring in the National Guard. They cannot bring in employees from other transit agencies.”

Legal, Economic Ramifications

A work-stoppage is likely to have substantive economic and political consequences for New York City and its surrounding economy where nearly 300,000 daily riders rely on the commuter line to travel between the city and Long Island.

The last LIRR strike took place in 1994 and lasted about two days, according to the unions. A strike could have an economic impact of up to $70 million a day.

“The regional economy depends on mobility of workers, the ability to go to the office, and while some of that has changed post-pandemic with people being able to work from home, that’s certainly not true for all professions,” said Alexander Heil, former chief economist for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Shanifah Rieara, chief customer offer at the MTA, said during an April 29 board meeting that while the transit agency was deploying shuttle buses in the event of a strike, remaining services would be limited. She urged commuters to work from home if possible.

“We cannot possibly replace Long Island Rail Road’s daily service,” Rieara said. “But we’re going to do our best to ensure that no essential worker is stranded or left behind.”

Congressional Intervention

One remaining legal option under the RLA is for Congress to step in and impose an agreement on the parties. That happened in 2022, when lawmakers and then-President Joe Biden passed a joint resolution to avert a strike between freight railroads and the unions representing their workers.

In cases where Congress intervenes, typically the recommendations of the Presidential Emergency Board are the terms imposed, said Robert Hawkins, a member at Cozen O’Connor. In the case of the LIRR negotiations, that would likely be the unions’ proposal.

But partisan politics are likely to play a much bigger role in whether Congress to gets involved in the LIRR strike compared to the 2022 freight strike, because both the House and the Senate are controlled by Republicans and the conflict is fairly contained to the Democrat-controlled New York state.

Hochul is currently running for reelection in November against Republican candidate Bruce Blakeman.

“The way I look at the legislative environment right now generally is that it’s very chaotic on the eve of midterms,” Duff said. “If you’re a Republican and you have your titular head embroiled in a war and everything that’s going on right now, it makes the political legislative dynamic volatile.”