MTA head Janno Lieber decries 'abusive work rules' amid labor strife

The head of the MTA said no decision has been made on whether to seek intervention from the White House to stave off a looming strike from several Long Island Rail Road unions he accused of benefiting from "abusive work rules" that allow them to inflate their wages.

On Thursday, the heads of five labor organizations representing just under half all LIRR union workers notified members that the National Mediation Board had ruled that "voluntary settlement" could not be reached between the unions and railroad management, opening the door to the possibility of a strike as early as next month, unless either side asks President Donald Trump’s administration to appoint a "Presidential Emergency Board" of mediators to oversee further contract talks.

If no such request is made, federal law allows for a work stoppage 30 days after the National Mediation Board formally releases both sides from mediation — a step that could come this week.

Asked whether the MTA — the LIRR’s parent organization — intends to seek White House intervention, MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said it was "premature" to answer the question, and that the decision would be made "in tandem" with the office of Gov. Kathy Hochul.

A spokesperson for Hochul also said no decision had yet been made.  A spokesman for the National Mediation Board, a federal agency that handles railroad and airline labor negotiations, said they could not comment.

In a joint statement issued Monday evening, the unions involved in the contract dispute said they are following the federallyregulated collective bargaining process "in an effort to secure a fair agreement for our members."

"We will stick up for our members, who are the workers that keep the LIRR running every day," the unions said. "They deserve a fair contract, and the modest wage increases we are seeking will secure that."

At issue is the size of raises for the five unions, who represent several trades at the railroad, including locomotive engineers, signal workers, electricians, and ticket clerks.

Although more than half all LIRR union workers have already settled a contract that guaranteed 9.5% in wage increases over three years, the five remaining unions have held out for more, arguing that their raises should be more in line with what other railroads in the United States have offered workers in recent years, including Amtrak and Philadelphia’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA.

On Friday, MTA spokesman Tim Minton pointed out that LIRR workers "are already the highest paid railroad employees in the country," and noted that the contract terms rejected by the unions have been accepted by more than 50,000 MTA employees and hundreds of thousands more public workers in the state.

"We do not understand why a pretty small group of unions representing very much a minority of Long Island Rail Road workers and a tiny minority of the overall MTA workforce is insisting that they should get a better deal than everybody else," Lieber said Monday, adding that federal mediators, with their decision, appeared to reward the "intransigence" of the holdout unions.

Lieber also said the railroad unions benefit from "some of the most abusive work rules anywhere in the MTA system," including one that allows engineers to earn extra pay for routine tasks.

"The idea that somebody should get paid double just because they drive a diesel train as well as an electric train in the same day, or that they drive the train that they were operating into the yard and get double time for that, has always been a source of frustration for us," Lieber said. "And we’re going to continue to raise the fact that the abusive work rules that are enjoyed and insisted on by these couple of unions has to be addressed."

Responding to Lieber's remarks, the unions said "the sudden concern over our work rules is nothing more than an attempt to hide the fact that LIRR has refused to bargain in good faith to address our concerns and the needs of our members."

The sudden threat of the first LIRR strike in more than 30 years caught some MTA officials by surprise, as the agency’s chief spokesman, John McCarthy, earlier this month predicted the mediation process had "a long way to go."

In their statement, the unions said the conclusion of mediation "should send a clear signal that we are prepared to exhaust every effort to reach an agreement, and we encourage the LIRR to finally begin taking these negotiations seriously."

It’s been 31 years since LIRR unions last walked off the job, and 11 years since they last voted to go on strike. In 2014, a coalition of labor organizations, led by conductors’ union head Anthony Simon, negotiated an eleventh-hour deal with the governor’s office to avert a shutdown.

This time around, Simon is on the sidelines, as his union agreed to the MTA’s offered terms last year.

"A potential strike is always an unfortunate part of the bargaining process, but thankfully our organization has a current agreement that mirrored the pattern of the overwhelming majority of unions in the MTA," Simon, the general chairman of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, said in a statement Friday. "We hope for everyone’s sake a resolution comes before any work stoppage."

Check back for updates on this developing story.

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.