With nine days to go until a possible transit strike, the back and forth at the bargaining table continues between engineers negotiating a new contract and New Jersey Transit.

New Jersey Transit CEO Kris Kolluri says he believes engineers want to strike. He said that after the engineers asked for $225,000 in annual pay - a $90,000 upgrade above their last offer.

The union is saying they don’t want to strike, noting the May 16 deadline is the earliest they could walk.

“That is not at all what our proposal was," said Tom Haas, chair of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, about the pay raise. “Our proposal to them would only get us to $170,000 in 2029, so I don’t understand where New Jersey Transit’s math is even coming from."

A labor expert from Seton Hall University watching the negotiations believes the union made a mistake early on in negotiations.

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Dr. Karin Boroff thinks no one would even be talking about a strike if union management knew their rank-and-file members would reject a tentative deal signed onto weeks ago. She says this showed disagreement within the membership.

“That is ordinarily a bad miscue when your membership doesn’t accept what the leadership puts on the table, said Boroff.

Engineers have said from the start that they are looking for a pay raise, putting them on par with the engineers at Amtrak and the LIRR, who earn 20% more than their counterparts.

NJ Transit says it is now waiting for the union’s next offer.

Commuters are on hold waiting to see if they’ll need to find a new way to work on May 16.