It could be a very long commute this summer for Long Islanders and city residents headed east to the beaches.
Tense contract negotiations between the MTA and eight Long Island Rail Road unions ended abruptly Friday with the threat of a strike as soon as July 20.
Both sides said the other was unwilling to move off their positions on raises, health and welfare benefits and pensions.
“They don’t come to the table [to negotiate],” Ricardo Sanchez, general chairman of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said of MTA representatives.
“They came with a proposal, they say ‘Accept it,’ and that’s it.”
Friday’s bargaining session lasted only an hour and a half before union chiefs stormed out, rejecting an MTA offer for a 17 percent wage increase spread over seven years.
The unions want the 17 percent hike over six years.