LIRR strike deal gives unions 4.5% raise, extends contract six weeks

The agreement reached between Metropolitan Transportation Authority managers and Long Island Rail Road labor leaders to get trains restarted Tuesday represented a middle ground between the sides' long-held negotiating positions, MTA and union sources said Tuesday. The MTA agreed to pay workers higher raises than its negotiators had said employees should receive, and unions settled for less than they wanted and agreed to some concessions.

Although the agreement wasn’t formalized until after 8 p.m. Monday — the third day of the strike — the contours of the deal began to take shape that morning.

Both sides had previously agreed to adopt the same terms in the first three years of a new contract as those already accepted by most other MTA unions, paying annual raises of 3%, 3% and 3.5%.

At issue was a fourth year. Pointing to high cost of living increases in recent years, the unions initially pushed for raises of 6.5%, but had come down to 5%. After initially demanding that the contract be limited to three years, MTA leaders eventually agreed to a fourth, but only with raises of 3%. They noted that LIRR union employees are already the highest-paid railroad workers in the United States, earning $136,000 a year on average.

During several negotiations leading up to Saturday’s 12:01 a.m. strike deadline, both sides budged slightly from their positions, with the MTA offering to pay a little more and the unions signaling they’d accept a little less. A demand by the MTA for new workers to pay higher contributions to their medical benefits was made Friday, and dropped by Monday.

The final deal, according to messages circulated by union leaders to their members, pays workers 4.5% in raises in the fourth year, but with some percentage of that increase funded through concessions. Those include the extension of the contract by six weeks, ending in mid-2027. That means potential raises in the unions’ next contract would be delayed.

The unions also agreed to undergo up to 16 hours of computer-based training each year outside of work hours and using their personal electronic devices, according to negotiation documents. Workers who finish the required training by a certain deadline will be compensated at their hourly rate for how long the courses took to complete.

That replaces the current system, which requires the LIRR to pay employees overtime to cover for their co-workers while they receive classroom-based training during regular work hours.

Despite those concessions, Michael Sullivan, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, said in a statement to Newsday the unions "essentially got a clean deal."

Workers also did not secure improvements to dental and vision coverage that other railroad unions got in their current contract, according to union sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details.

A spokesman for the coalition of five LIRR unions involved in the dispute declined to discuss details of the new deal, saying that labor leaders were "focused on briefing their members," who will have to vote to ratify the contracts.

The agreement will also have to be ratified by the MTA Board, which holds its monthly meeting Wednesday, but is not expected to vote on the contract until a future date.

MTA leaders had said that without major concessions — including the elimination of antiquated union work rules that promised workers significantly more pay for minimal extra work — the 5% raises sought by the LIRR unions could have caused financial calamity, resulting in tax increases, service cuts, layoffs or fare hikes as high as 8%, double the usual rate, starting in 2027.

But, at just half a percentage point lower and with modest concessions, LIRR President Rob Free said the deal struck with the unions was "affordable and acceptable."

"We wouldn’t have accepted the deal if it would have put a burden on the taxpayers and the ridership," Free said at a Jamaica news conference Tuesday afternoon. "There are things in there that make it more affordable, more palatable for the unions to agree upon, and make it easier for us to fit within our financial structure."

Free noted that one of the MTA's concerns about paying workers raises of 5% is that "the other unions within the MTA would look for that same number. This is not that number."

Marc Herbst, the Suffolk County representative on the MTA Board, said he’s eager to hear from the transit authority’s chief financial officer how the contract will be afforded, especially if it sets a precedent to be followed by the MTA’s largest labor organization, the Transport Workers Union, representing 40,000 city bus and subway workers.

"I can assure you there are certain members that are on that board right now that would not consider this a rubber stamp, and they're looking at it very closely," Herbst said. "I don’t want to give the perception that we’re going to vote it down, but I’m just saying, they’re taking a hard-line look at this and they’re looking at the overall financial picture."

While the three-year-long contract fight failed to yield major reforms in railroad union contracts, Ken Girardin, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, thinks the MTA and Gov. Kathy Hochul did achieve some wins, including in shining a light on the peculiarities of LIRR labor agreements, which are rooted in the century-old federal Railway Labor Act and allow for work stoppages and burdensome work rules.

"There's been an air of mystery around the Long Island Rail Road for generations," said Girardin, who praised Hochul for not immediately folding to the unions demands. "She called the unions ‘reckless.’ She talked about their compensation being out of whack with national norms. She didn't go all the way to global thermonuclear war. But she definitely got close."

Frank Wilner, a former White House-appointed chief of staff at the Surface Transportation Board and author of the book "Understanding the Railway Labor Act," believes the federally regulated collective bargaining process worked as intended, and pointed to the fact that the LIRR went 32 years without a strike as evidence.

By encouraging concessions, exhausting all other options and even allowing for the intervention of the White House before a work stoppage is legally permitted, Wilner said the Railway Labor Act proved to be "a manual of peace, rather than a manual of war."

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.