NYC Transit Workers Strike

NYC Transit Workers Strike was the 1st strike of its kind in NYC, shutting down the subway for 12 days. The twelve-day strike began on New Year's Day; the last trains rolled at 8:02 am. An injunction to end the strike was issued later that day, under the 1947 Condon-Wadlin Act. On January 2, the union reduced its economic demands, but the TA responded only by getting a judge's order for the arrest of Quill and eight other union leaders. The arrests were set for 1 a.m. on January 4.

The strike started January 1, the day of Mayor John Lindsay's inauguration. "It is an act of defiance against 8 million people," Lindsay said at the time.

On January 10, 15,000 workers picketed City Hall. Negotiations moved forward through mediators, with movement from both sides. At 1:37 A.M. on January 13, MacMahon announced that the union was recommending settlement.

The package, worth over $60 million, included wages increases from $3.18 to $4.14 an hour, an additional paid holiday, increased pension benefits, and other gains. Gains averaged nine percent for the next eight years. The leader and instigator - Transport Workers Union Local 100 Chief Mike Quill , already in ill health at the time of the arrest, died on January 28.

And other workers looked at this realized ir kind of works. This strike promoted unionization and was followed by a number of other very big strikes.

The 1980 NYC Transit Workers Strike brought all subway and bus lines in the five boroughs to a standstill for the 2nd time in its history, due to a walkout by 33,000 members of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100. This strike, which began on April 1, 1980, halted all subway and bus lines across the five boroughs for 12 days. The strike was triggered by a demand for higher wages for contracted workers to account for the steadily increasing cost of living. The man at the center of this watershed moment in TWU’s history was John Edward Lawe. Lawe served on the negotiating committee during the union’s first citywide transit strike in 1966.  In 1968, he was elected Division 1 Vice President.  Then in 1977, Lawe succeeded Ellis Van Riper as President of Local 100.

For the 3rd time in NYC's history, during the busiest shopping week of the year bringing the city's buses and subways were brought to a halt, affecting over 7 million daily riders. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 (TWU) walked off the job after rejecting a contract offer from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) that included demands for workers to pay 6% of their wages toward pensions. There was an estimated loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in the first few days of the holiday season.