"A strike of any duration that shuts down the Northeast Corridor will cause severe disruption to our service and inconvenience to tens of thousands of commuters in New Jersey," Sarles said. "The spine of our rail network is the Northeast Corridor. More than half of our 740 daily trains rely on it for all or part of their trips." -Executive Director Richard Sarles-NJ Transit would not be able to run trains into Manhattan if Amtrak workers strike. The agency would be forced to shut down its busiest rail line, which runs entirely on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor tracks.
Service would be halted on sections of the three other lines that depend partly on Amtrak's infrastructure -- the North Jersey Coast Line north of Rahway, the Raritan Valley Line in Newark and the Atlantic City Line near Philadelphia. The Midtown Direct trains on the Morris & Essex and Montclair-Boonton lines would be forced to divert to Hoboken.
NJ Transit would respond to an Amtrak strike by running shuttle buses between its rail stations and the PATH stations in Newark, Harrison and Hoboken, Sarles said. But the agency doesn't have nearly enough buses to make up for the missing trains. Sarles estimated that it will be able to accommodate only 40 to 50 percent of the passengers it carries during the typical daily peak period.
What it is about
About 10,000 Amtrak employees from nine unions have been working without a contract since the end of 1999. The unions have engaged in years of unsuccessful mediation. The emergency board sided with the unions and recommended that wage increases be made retroactive. Amtrak, which relies on federal subsidies, is worried about whether it can afford the back pay, which would amount to about $13,000 per employee, or roughly $130 million.
Under the Railway Labor Act, most disputes that get to this point end with a contract based on the emergency board's report. In cases when that doesn't happen, Congress usually imposes the board's recommendations.
Imagine working nine years without a contract and then told you were not going to get any back pay that you earned and are deserved. With this administration one never knows what will happen. It is probably a way to try and cripple Amtrak and sell it off to a private entity a la the Shock Doctrine.
