Long Island Rail Road Workers Conquer Demands with Three-Day Strike

Read our editorial on the significance of strikes here. Read our coverage of the LIRR strike here.

Long Island Rail Road workers won many of their demands after going on a three-day strike that ended May 18 with a tentative agreement between the unions and the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), though the tentative agreement still falls short of workers’ original demands.

According to a union email sent out to LIRR workers and shared with The Worker, the tentative agreement includes a retroactive wage increase of 9.5%, a 4.5% wage increase for 2026, and a $3,000 lump-sum payment. If workers approve, the contract will be up for renegotiation on August 30, 2027.

While the tentative agreement is higher than what the MTA was offering—in addition to the 9.5% retroactive pay raise, a 3% increase in the final year of the contract and a lump-sum payment—the 4.5% raise won is still less than the 5% increase workers were demanding, and about a third less than the 6.5% raise workers were fighting for in 2025.

“Honestly I wish we could’ve got 5% for the last year,” a LIRR worker told The Worker, “but other than that I think it’s pretty solid all around.”

LIRR workers have not received a pay raise since 2022. Since then, national inflation increased by about 14%, and inflation in the New York City metro area has been even higher over the past two years, according to the NYC comptroller.

About half the LIRR workforce—roughly 3,500 workers across five unions—went on strike May 16 after MTA refused to give in to their demands for a four-year contract with pay raises to keep up with inflation.

The other half of LIRR workers previously settled for a 9.5% raise across three years, while the remaining 3,500 workers successfully took to the picket lines for a fourth-year pay raise.

A worker in Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100, which organizes over 40,000 MTA transit workers in the city and whose contract recently expired with MTA, told The Worker the outcome of the LIRR strike will set the pace for their own negotiations. This strategic view was echoed by LIRR workers themselves who said they were striking not just for themselves but as the front line for workers across New York City.

LIRR workers initially voted near-unanimously to go on strike in September 2025 but were overridden by their union leaders, who instead reached out to the Trump administration to establish a Presidential Emergency Board. The PEB establishes a moratorium on strikes while the federal government intervenes and mediates.

Both LIRR workers and a union official told The Worker about the possibility of a wildcat strike last year after union leadership betrayed workers, showing that the strike had the broad support of LIRR workers and disproving claims from New York Governor Kathy Hochul—who oversees MTA—that the strike was the fault of “a small group of union leaders”.

With the PEB failing and the moratoriums expiring, LIRR workers went on strike for the first time since 1994. While in 1994 the strike lasted only for the weekend, the latest strike extended into the work week, dramatically increasing its strength.

According to the state comptroller, the three-day strike cost monopolists an estimated $183 million and was too powerful to offset with scabs.

Image: Long Island Rail Road workers on strike represented by the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS), one of five unions representing striking LIRR workers. Image retrieved from BRS website.

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