The possibility of a strike against NJ Transit increased on April 15 after The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) members voted 87% not to ratify a deal reached in March. Members of the 500-person union can strike or NJ Transit can call a lockout beginning May 15.
The last railroad strike against NJ Transit was in 1983, according to the union. NJ Transit narrowly avoided a strike in 2016, when contract negotiations settled just hours before the strike deadline. NJ Transit is the nation’s third-largest commuter railroad, carrying 195,000 passengers on an average weekday, according to the union.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines “major work stoppages” as those involving at least 1,000 workers and lasting one full work shift between Monday–Friday, excluding federal holidays. There have been just three labor actions in New Jersey against private companies that topped that 1,000-worker threshold since 2019, according to the Australian software firm Noggin, a division of Motorola Solutions.
Two of those strikes occurred in New Brunswick in 2023. The largest was the strike by 9,000 educational services employees at Rutgers University. That action lasted five days from April 10-14. Later that year, 1,700 health care and social assistance workers struck Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital from Aug. 8 to Dec. 15.
The third work stoppage was the longest, pitting Stamford, Conn.-based telecom Charter Communications, Inc. (whose services are branded as Spectrum), against the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). This job action involved 1,800 Charter employees and lasted for 1,269 workdays, from March 28, 2017, to April 18, 2022, though the dispute reportedly festered for as long as five years before the strike.
“With 682,000 workers who are dues-paying union members, New Jersey has one of the highest union membership rates in the country,” said Noggin’s General Manager James Boddham-Whetham. According to the BLS, 16.2% of the state’s workforce is unionized, well above the national average of 9.9% in 2024. Union membership rates in the Garden State have been above the national average since 1989, when comparable state data became available.
Boddham-Whetham said in the private sector in New Jersey, “the industries with the highest unionization rates are utilities, transportation and warehousing, and educational services. The union member rate in the public sector is highest in local government, with remits over public safety officers and teachers.”
The longshoremen strike that impacted Port Newark in 2024 was part of a larger port workers movement affecting 14 ports on the East and Gulf Coasts. About 25,000 dockworkers walked off the job when their contracts expired on Oct. 1 The strike lasted for three days before negotiations resumed. This led to a six-year agreement in which dockworkers got a 62% wage hike.
BLS data show that 271,500 workers were involved in 31 major work stoppages in the United States that began in 2024. This is a decrease from 2023, when 458,900 workers participated in 33 major stoppages. Strike activity is rising after a slowdown during the pandemic.
