A breakdown of how NJ Transit engineers used media strategy to strengthen their strike threat. The speaker analyzes how they leveraged public attention and commuter impact to gain negotiation leverage, set against the socioeconomic context of the engineers involved.
New Jersey Transit Engineers message delivered. The New Jersey Transit engineers just pulled a textbook media move. And from a communication strategy standpoint, it is brilliant. They threatened to strike on a random Friday in May, not tied to a holiday, yet still managed to dominate headlines in the nation's largest media market. Why? Because they're not just moving bodies, they're transporting Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and broadcast media executives who rake in seven and eight figure salaries, while the engineers themselves average a little over six figures with overtime. The class contrast. That's the message. And they got it on the front page without lifting a picket sign. They didn't actually strike. They just made sure the threat was loud enough to get people's attention. That's leverage. That's smart communication. This wasn't about shutting down trains. It was about reframing who keeps New York and New Jersey running and how underappreciated they are. When your message makes the rich late and makes the news, you're doing media strategy, right? Those of you who don't live in the United States, there's New York City, which obviously you've heard of, and then it's a small little island. Right next to it is this big state, New Jersey, and a huge percentage of Wall street executives, publishing executives, PR advertising executives, people who make high six figures, seven figures, Wall street executives, some of them make eight figures a year. They still take the train in from New Jersey because even if you had a stretch limousine, your own driver, it takes too long in traffic. The train is generally the fastest way to go. Now, I used to live in New Jersey. I. I used to take New Jersey Transit, the path from Hoboken to midtown Manhattan on a daily basis. So I'm very familiar with this train lines and the train station. And by most people's standards across the world, the salaries these engineers are making seems high. 130. Some of the proposals, they would go up to $250,000 a year. So you may be thinking, my gosh, why are they complaining? Seems like they got it good, right? Well, this is New Jersey. So you have high state taxes and have housing costs. I mean, a shack can cost you a million dollars in certain towns in New Jersey. So it's in a very expensive place to live. And they look at the people using their service. So many of them have extraordinarily high incomes. They've decided, let's play our strike card or threaten to it for leverage to get more concessions out of the representatives on the government side. So am I saying they 100% deserve it? No, I'M looking at this through the lens of communication and how they're communicating. So far, it seems to be good. They didn't shut down when there was a crisis in New York. They didn't shut down on 9 11. And people are fleeing for their lives. They're not risking people's lives. They're giving people notice. They haven't done it yet, but they are flexing their clout. And that can be a good thing to do in negotiations. Otherwise, why should someone pay you more? It's always going to be easy to say, hey, we like you. No pay rise. That's always going to be the safest thing, whether it's a private sector organization or a public sector organization. So I'll be monitoring that more. If you happen to live in New Jersey and are affected by this or feel that you are, please go ahead and let me know. I would love to hear from you.
