By: Jerome Brookshire

A crippling strike on the Long Island Rail Road was narrowly avoided Monday, at least temporarily, after five unions representing thousands of workers took the extraordinary step of appealing directly to the Trump administration for federal intervention, The New York Post reported.

Union leaders, speaking at a tense press conference, announced that they had formally requested a presidential emergency board—a rarely invoked tool under federal labor law—to step in and evaluate the bitter contract dispute between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the unions. The move, they stressed, would not end the conflict but would postpone a walkout that had been set to begin Thursday.

“This action does not mean a strike won’t happen,” said Gil Lang, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. “But it does mean it won’t happen now.” His warning underscored how fragile the reprieve remains.

According to The New York Post, the unions’ decision to petition Washington directly was unprecedented. Jim Louis, national vice president of the BLET, emphasized the gravity of the maneuver. “I can say in my 49 years in the rail industry, this request by the unions is a first,” he said.

The unions are demanding a 16 percent wage increase spread over three years for approximately 3,400 workers. By contrast, MTA officials are offering just 9.5 percent and are seeking concessions on long-standing work rules that they say artificially inflate salaries. LIRR President Rob Free has argued that the agency cannot afford the union’s demands without pushing its finances deeper into the red.

Union leaders, however, accuse Gov. Kathy Hochul and MTA brass of bad-faith tactics, claiming they are attempting to vilify workers and frighten commuters into turning against them. “The MTA will continue to play their games and scare people,” said BLET vice president Kevin Sexton. “Maybe after today they might dial down a little.”

“What we’re asking for is exceedingly reasonable, essentially the status quo when it comes to the cost of living,” Sexton added, according to The New York Post. “The MTA’s response has been to stall, stall, stall.”

The unions further charged that riders were being used as “pawns” in a calculated campaign to shift public sympathy toward management. They dismissed warnings of service collapse as exaggerated scare tactics designed to force concessions.

For Hochul, the confrontation is the latest in a string of high-profile labor disputes. The governor, already under fire for her recent endorsement of far-left mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, now faces renewed criticism for failing to resolve the LIRR stalemate before it escalated to the brink of a paralyzing strike.

Whether the presidential emergency board can bridge the gulf remains uncertain. The board, if convened, would review both sides’ proposals and issue recommendations, but those recommendations are not binding. Still, the request represents a pause in hostilities—and a recognition that the impasse has reached a critical juncture.

For now, the trains will keep running. But as The New York Post noted, the fragile truce may do little more than delay a showdown that could cripple New York’s busiest commuter rail line and rattle the region’s fragile economy.