May 16 (Reuters) – About 3,500 workers at New York’s Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) went on strike on Saturday after failing to reach a wage agreement, halting the busiest commuter rail system in the United States, according to a union statement.Â
The Long Island Rail Road serves nearly 300,000 passengers daily and is owned and operated by the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters union said in a statement that the strike, the first in 32 years, was launched by a group of five unions. It said the workers had gone three years without raises during the bargaining process.
“This strike would not have happened if the MTA and LIRR offered our members the reasonable terms the government recommended multiple times,” Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen President Mark Wallace said.
“We hope LIRR gets serious soon to avoid further unnecessary disruptions for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. They know where to find us when they’re ready: on the streets.”
President Donald Trump had signed an executive order in January to appoint a second emergency board to conduct mediation to avert a work stoppage at the Long Island Rail Road, after the unions asked him to intervene.
Trump had initially named a board in September last year to head off the labor dispute.
(Reporting by Mihika Sharma and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue)
