rights

The strike leaves hundreds of thousands of commuters in New Jersey and New York without rail access.

New Jersey’s commuter rail engineers are on strike after negotiations for higher wages failed to materialise, leaving trains idle for commuters in the third-largest transit system in the United States for the first time in more than 40 years.

The strike began on Friday after The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which represents 450 NJ Transit engineers who drive the agency’s commuter trains and agency management, broke off talks late Thursday after an unsuccessful 15-hour bargaining session.

The labour clash came weeks after negotiators had agreed on a potential deal in March, but the union’s members voted overwhelmingly to reject it.

NJ Transit has said it cannot afford the pay rises that the engineers are seeking because 14 other unions that negotiate separate labour contracts with the agency would demand the same, higher wage rates for their members.

The union pushed back on the gripe and has said that “NJT claims it doesn’t have the money to pay engineers a salary in line with industry standards, but somehow found a half-billion dollars for a new and unnecessary headquarters.”

New Jersey Transit opened a new headquarters earlier this year.

The union has said it is simply aiming to raise the engineers’ salaries to match those at other commuter railroads in the region.

“They [rail engineers]  have gone without a raise for six years and have been seeking a new contract since October 2019,” the union said in a statement.

NJ Transit says the engineers currently make $135,000 on average and that management had offered a deal that would yield an average salary of $172,000. But the union has disputed those figures, saying the current average salary is actually $113,000.

The parties have exchanged accusations of bad-faith bargaining.

The strike means that hundreds of thousands of daily passengers in New Jersey and New York are without service. NJ Transit said its rail system began its shutdown at 12:01am local time Friday.

In a news conference, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and NJ Transit’s Chief Executive Officer Kris Kolluri told reporters talks had paused but that management remained willing to resume negotiations at any time.

“We must reach a final deal that is both fair to employees and affordable,” Murphy, a Democrat, told reporters. “Let’s get back to the table and seal a deal.”

Murphy and Kolluri said the US National Mediation Board had reached out to both sides to propose reopening talks on Sunday morning, or sooner if the parties wished.

The union statement made no mention of when talks might be restarted. Protests began at several locations across the rail system, including NJ Transit’s headquarters in Newark, Penn Station in New York City, and the Atlantic City rail terminal.

The governor and the NJ Transit CEO also outlined contingency plans for dealing with the work stoppage, the first transit strike to hit New Jersey since a three-week walkout in 1983.

Workers urged to stay home

The looming strike had already prompted the agency to cancel trains and buses to MetLife Stadium for pop star Shakira’s concert last night and again for this evening.

In an advisory, NJ Transit encouraged commuters to work from home starting on Friday if possible.

The agency said it would increase bus services on existing lines and charter private buses to operate from several satellite lots in the event of a rail strike but warned buses would only be able to handle about 20 percent of rail customers.

Kolluri said last week that the union was “playing a game of chicken with the lives of 350,000 riders”.

“We have sought nothing more than equal pay for equal work, only to be continually rebuffed by New Jersey Transit,” Tom Haas, the union’s general chairman, said earlier this week.

A 23-year-old Mexican influencer, Valeria Marquez, was fatally shot while livestreaming on Tuesday.

Marquez, who had more than 113,000 followers on the platform, was broadcasting to her audience when the attack occurred.

According to a statement from the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office, the case is being investigated under femicide protocols, applied in instances where a woman is killed due to her gender.

What is femicide?

Femicide refers to gender-related killings against women and girls. According to the latest report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women, femicide is rising around the globe.

In 2023, a woman was intentionally killed every 10 minutes by a partner or family member.

Of the 85,000 women and girls killed across the world in 2023, 60 percent (51,000) were murdered by an intimate partner or a family member.

How common is femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Honduras has the highest femicide rate with 7.2 women killed per 100,000 in 2023, followed by the Dominican Republic (2.4 per 100,000) and Brazil (1.4 per 100,000).

Mexico has the fourth-highest femicide rate in Latin America and the Caribbean, alongside Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia – all with 1.3 killings per 100,000 women in 2023.

In terms of absolute killings, Brazil saw the highest number of femicide cases with 1,463 women murdered. It was followed by Mexico, where 852 women were killed as a result of femicide in 2023. Honduras had the third-highest number, with 380 femicide cases.

Femicide is on the rise in Mexico

The rate of femicide is rising on the whole in the country, despite some fluctuations over the years.

It has become a major concern in Mexico with recorded cases rising significantly over the past decade. In 2015, femicides represented 19.8 percent of female homicides. This proportion had increased to 24.2 percent by 2024.

According to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNCLAC), in 2015, the rate of femicide in Mexico was 0.7 women per 100,000. In 2023, that number now stands at 1.3 per 100,000 women – though that’s down marginally from a peak of 1.6 per 100,000 in 2021. Gender-based violence against women grew globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Mexico was no exception.

While statistics from UNCLAC show the rate of femicide in Mexico has declined over the past three years, it remains a pronounced and often silent issue due to underreporting, say experts.

In Mexico, some 85 percent of women aged 15 and over who have experienced physical or sexual violence did not file a complaint, according to Mexico’s National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships.

Where in Mexico has the worst rates of femicide?

The killing of Marquez took place just days before another woman, a mayoral candidate in the state of Veracruz, was also shot dead during a livestream alongside three other people.

According to Mexico’s National Public Security System (SNSP), the national rate of femicide was 1.18 per 100,000 in 2024.

The state of Morelos, in south-central Mexico, had the highest rate of femicide with 4.7 women per 100,000 murdered, followed by Chihuahua (2.35 per 100,000) and Tabasco (2.22 per 100,000).

In Jalisco state where Marquez was killed, the femicide rate was 0.63 per 100,000 in 2024.

Jalisco is ranked sixth out of Mexico’s 32 states, including Mexico City, for homicides, with 906 recorded there since the beginning of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s term in October 2024, according to the data consultancy TResearch.

The United Nations raised alarm over the large number of people being deported from the United States, particularly the hundreds sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador. The rights office warned that the whereabouts and legal status of many remain unknown, raising serious human rights concerns.