NEW YORK (AP) — The Long Island Rail Road, North America’s largest commuter rail system, was shut down Saturday after unionized workers went on strike for the first time in three decades.
The railroad, which serves New York City and its eastern suburbs, ceased operations just after midnight after five unions representing about half its workforce walked off the job.
The unions and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the public agency that runs the railroad, have been negotiating for months on a new contract, with talks stalled over the question of workers’ salaries and healthcare premiums. President Donald Trump’s administration tried to broker a deal, but the unions were legally allowed to strike starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
OK stupid question(s): The LIRR runs 24 hours, and up until 12:01 AM, everyone is working (so has to do things as normal). What happens to the crews of trains which left prior to midnight? Would their crews be informed of the strike midway? And if so, would they need to just kick passengers off and return to the depot, or abandon the train at a station, or would they finish their current route and terminate at the end of line?
Train movements have to be coordinated by dispatchers (not sure if they're also on strike) - would they need to stay at work and coordinate trains returning to yards even though the strike had started?
According to this, trains that started their run before the strike started would still go to their final destination. (The article even lists the affected trains.) It would be interesting to know whether those folks got paid for that shift, or whether paychecks stopped at 12:01
An interesting question. I am sure the union's strike terms are not stupidly written to forbid closing everything up safely. I'm sure that "train crash caused by strike" would hurt their negotiations significantly.
I bet this was a headache for signalling and yard crew though, since their normal scheduled train movements would be replaced by moving everything into yards.
I wonder how long after midnight it was before the last person actually walked off - I imagine it would take a few hours to get every train in the system safely put away in yards.
I assume since they knew this was likely coming there was probably some planning on how to get everything safely put away.