Chapter 7
Union History
Early attempts
The establishment of the Transport Workers Union serves as an example of the difficulties the workers met with in their struggle to obtain healthy working conditions, reasonable working hours and pay that was above the bare minimum to exist.
After constant attempts to unionize in 1905, 1910, 1916 and 1919, the occasion to establish a real and lasting labor organization for the transport workers arose in 1932.
Privately owned transport
Transit companies were then owned by powerful and wealthy private interests, which kept wages pitifully low and working conditions extremely bad. Most transit workers labored up to 11.5 hours a day, seven days a week.
In 1932 the management of the transit companies dealt a harsh blow to its work force. A 10 % pay cut accompanied by a high number of lay-offs necessitated an even higher work tempo for the workers who stayed.
A genuine union
Seven Irish subway workers decided that a genuine trade union was the only way to improve their situation. Michael J. Quill soon became the leader with his great gift of speech, his dedication to industrial unionism and his courage to risk all to attain the workers' goals. This was proved decades later when he gave his life for the TWU during the first big transit strike in 1966.
A militant approach
To succeed the TWU had to be militant in its approach to organizing. The transit companies' "breakies" were ordered to chase out all workers who were friendly to the union. To counter this activity, they met only in small groups. The companies also established a phony union to keep workers away from the TWU.
It also had to establish connections with other societies and organizations, but only the U.S. Communist Party provided help. Other groups turned them down from fear of being involved in controversial labor matters.
A wide base of membership
The TWU organization model proved successful because it included all crafts, departments and lines. This secured a wider base of membership and consequently a wider sphere of influence when confrontations occurred.
Protected by law
By 1935, TWU no longer had to work in secret. Later the same year the Wagner Act which prohibited the obstruction of trade unions, was passed. The same year the first successful strike of any proportion was carried out by the Transit Workers Union, which by then can be considered fully-fledged.
One in six is organized
By 1950 more than 1/3 of the nation's workforce were union members. Fifty years later approximately one in six is organized.
In spite of the decline in union membership from the 1970s nationwide, TWU has served its members through rain and shine for more than six decades and done so with considerable results.