BLET members at a recent NJ Transit public hearing, from left: Mike Liffner, Division 53; Steve McCusker, Division 373; Pete McGinnis, Division 373 Vice Local Chairman; and Don Melhorn, Division 272 Secretary-Treasurer.
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NJ Transit held the first of 10 scheduled in-person public meetings in Atlantic City on March 4, and BLET members showed up in force to make the riding public fully aware that there shouldn’t be any fare increases without fair treatment for locomotive engineers. A BLET representative spoke at the hearing and a large throng of BLET members handed out informational flyers to those attending the meeting.
NJ Transit is holding the public hearings from March 4 through March 8 to allow for public comments before a plan for a 15 percent fare increase goes up for a vote by the NJ Transit Board of Directors.
Based on NJ Transit’s reaction, management was not happy to have BLET in the building. In fact, they called the police in an attempt to block BLET members from attending the hearing and from passing out flyers.
The BLET membership persisted and spoke at the hearing anyway. NJ Transit showed a Power Point slide show as part of its presentation to justify the 15 percent fare increase. A BLET spokesman poked holes in the NJ Transit presentation, which failed to mention NJ Transit’s misplaced priorities such as spending billions for luxury corporate offices instead of settling its contract with BLET and providing wage increases to locomotive engineers.
Following the hearing, BLET General Chairman Tom Haas explained BLET’s position in a quote that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “While NJ Transit management is spending half a billion dollars on a new headquarters building, NJT locomotive engineers have not seen a raise since 2019. We have been working through the pandemic and near-record inflation without a single increase in our wages.”