Rep. Payne Of NJ Applauds Deal That May Avert Railroad Strike

NEW JERSEY — A congressman from New Jersey who chairs a key federal transportation committee is praising a deal that may have averted a national freight railroad strike.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that a tentative agreement has been reached between railroads and the unions representing their workers. Such a development would have further tangled supply chains, and devastated the economy in the weeks before the midterm elections. A railroad industry trade group earlier said shutting down the nation’s railroads would halt shipments of food and fuel at a cost of $2 billion a day. Read More: National Railroad Strike Averted In Tentative Deal, Biden Says

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey’s 10th District gave an enthusiastic thumbs up to the news.

Payne, who chairs the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, had this to say about the tentative agreement:

“I want to applaud President Biden and his team for their leadership and efforts to avoid a railway strike. Even a temporary stoppage of America’s rail shipping could have cost our economy billions of dollars in lost activity and halted passenger rail service across the country. This tentative agreement should benefit workers with better pay and safer working conditions. I want to thank the rail unions and the railroads for staying the course and working it out. No one knows the economic devastation their agreement averts for our nation. Hopefully, this agreement will establish more trust between unions and rail carriers so we never have to face the possibility of such a devastating strike again.”

New Jersey’s recently redrawn 10th Congressional district includes the following municipalities:

• Essex County – Caldwell, East Orange, Essex Fells, Irvington, Montclair (part), Newark (part), Orange, Verona, West Orange
• Hudson County – Jersey City (part)
• Union County – Cranford, Garwood, Hillside, Kenilworth, Linden (part), Roselle, Roselle Park, Union Township

This article contains reporting by Beth Dalbey, Patch staff

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