Lieber earlier predicted possible 3-day strike
The MTA’s chairman appeared to predict earlier this year that if an LIRR union strike took place, it would last three days.
At a March board meeting, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said “a three-day strike will waste big money.”
He added later at the same meeting that a strike would be “insane ... not just because of the harm it does to Long Islanders and to their economy, but because three days of a strike will wipe out 1.1% of wage raises you are fighting for.”
Union officials have repeatedly questioned Lieber’s prediction of a three-day strike. Signalmen union leader Michael Sullivan, at an April 8 news conference, said he “didn’t know that to be true.”
“What I can say is, once we reach this moment, there are now guaranteed off-ramps,” Sullivan said.
A New Jersey Transit strike last year involving the same locomotive engineers union as the one involved in the LIRR strike lasted three days.
The LIRR’s last union strike lasted two days, beginning on Friday, June 17, 1994, and being settled on the night of Sunday, June 18, ahead of the Monday morning rush hour.
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.
