Nearly 170 striking LIRR union workers earned more than $200,000

Nearly 170 striking Long Island Rail Road workers brought in more than $200,000 per year in 2024, and five made more than $300,000, a Newsday payroll analysis found.

The workers — set to return to the job after a deal was reached late Monday —  will receive their first raises since 2022,  which their unions say were needed "simply ... to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has said LIRR workers are already paid well, with a median income of $136,000, including overtime.

Newsday's analysis of the payroll data shows many LIRR employees, in the most-recent year of payroll data available, made quite a bit more than that.

Pay for the roughly 3,500 workers would increase by about 15% under the raises sought by striking workers. The first three years of the proposal are retroactive, while the fourth year is for 2026.

The LIRR strike, which lasted three days, was the first since 1994. It led Monday to deserted train platforms, blocked station entrances and heavy traffic as workers picketed outside transit hubs.

After the unions walked out on negotiations without a settlement just after Saturday's early- morning strike deadline, MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber unleashed a blistering attack on the unions, saying  LIRR employees "are already the highest paid railroad workers in the country" regularly "feasting" on overtime because of generous work rules.

The unions have said the raises they’ve sought — which they say would amount to 14.5% over four years — are the bare minimum necessary to get by. Compounded, the raises total 15.3% over four years.

Since April 2022, the cost of living in the New York metropolitan area has jumped more than 16%, according to the Consumer Price Index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"They are simply fighting to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living in the New York region," two of the unions, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the Transportation Communications Union, said in a statement Sunday.

"There seems to be a disconnect between Mr. Lieber and the reality faced by workers who have gone four years without a raise," they said.

On Saturday, MTA officials pointed Newsday to other figures showing LIRR worker pay is higher compared to other MTA workers, and also highly subsidized by New Yorkers.

Taxes and subsidies make up 68% of LIRR's operating costs, according to 2024 figures provided by the MTA. That's more than the 64% for city buses and subways and the 62% for Metro-North Railroad.

MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan pointed to MTA figures showing the LIRR is forced to budget for around $170 million for overtime each year because of antiquated work rules that the MTA sought to reform in exchange for higher wages.

"There's just no other agency that has no choice but to pay workers double or triple wages for one day's work in the normal course of business," Donovan said in a statement. "And their base wages are already the highest in the entire industry."

Donovan added that, in addition to high wages, LIRR workers enjoy "extraordinary benefits, more generous sick pay for line of duty injuries than even cops get, and the enormous opportunities for overtime caused by work rules we weren't even asking to reform by the time we got to the later stages of the negotiation."

According to MTA and union sources, the MTA’s final offer to labor leaders before the talks broke would have raised worker pay by nearly 4.5% in the fourth year of a new contract through a combination of a traditional pay raise and a lump-sum payment, but would have also come with new healthcare contributions from incoming employees.

While terms of the deal weren't available late Monday, the two sides had already agreed on 3% raises in the first two years and a 3.5% raise in the third year. The unions had been seeking a 5% raise in the fourth year.

A Newsday analysis of MTA payroll records from 2024 further puts the unions’ pay demands in perspective.

Of the dozens of LIRR employees who made $200,000 or more in 2024, many reached that level by doubling their base pay with six-figure overtime earnings.

Among the 10 highest-paid workers from the five unions in 2024, the average annual income was $305,992 according to payroll documents. Five union workers made more than $300,000, including the unions’ highest-paid employee, locomotive engineer Brian Gengler, who made $353,563 in 2024. Gengler did not return calls seeking comment. The pay does not include the cost of benefits such as health insurance.

Newsday's Anastasia Valeeva contributed to this story.