Mike Quill

Michael J. Quill was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), a union founded by subway workers in New York City that expanded to represent employees in other forms of transit, and the President of the TWU for most of the first thirty years of its existence. A close ally of the Communist Party USA for the first twelve years of his leadership of the union, he broke with it in 1948 and drove his former allies out of the union. At odds with the mayors of New York City for most of his career, he led a twelve day transit strike in 1966 that landed him in jail and won significant wage increases for his members. He died a few days after the end of the strike.

Founding the TWU

After working a series of odd jobs in New York, he went to work for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) later that year, first as a night gateman, then as a clerk or "ticket chopper". Moving from station to station, Quill got to know a large number of IRT employees, while using the quiet of the late hours to read labor history and, in particular, the works of James Connolly. The name that Quill and others chose for their new union was, in fact, a tribute to the Irish Transport and General Workers Union led by Jim Larkin and Connolly twenty years earlier.

Related Topics:
Interborough Rapid Transit Company - James Connolly - Irish Transport and General Workers Union - Jim Larkin

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That union grew out of a unique mixture of two revolutionary traditions: the Irish insurrectionary history of Connolly and the IRA and the Communist Party. The IRT was, in fact, filled with veterans of the recent Troubles in Ireland, to the point that some jokingly referred to it as "Irish Republican Training". All of the founding members of the TWU belonged to the Clan na Gael, a secretive Irish organization, and the first discussions of forming a union took place across the street from a Clan meeting.

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The other factor, the Communist Party, supplied organizers, operating funds, and connections with organizations outside the Irish-American community. Two Trade Union Unity League organizers, John Santo and Austin Hogan, met with the Clan na Gael's members in a cafeteria on Columbus Circle on April 12, 1934, the date now used to mark the foundation of the union.

Related Topics:
April 12 - 1934

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The CP was at that time in the last years of its ultrarevolutionary Third Period, when it sought to form revolutionary unions outside the American Federation of Labor. The party therefore focused both on organizing workers into the union and recruiting members for the Party through mimeographed shop papers with titles such as "Red Shuttle" or "Red Dynamo". The new union appointed Tom O'Shea — who would later become a witness against Quill before the Dies Committee — as its first president, assigning Quill a secondary position.

Related Topics:
Third Period - American Federation of Labor - Dies Committee

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Quill proved to have more leadership potential than O'Shea, however. He was a persuasive speaker, willing to "soapbox" outside of IRT facilities for hours, and capable of great charm in individual conversations. He also acquired some renown after an incident in 1936 in which some "beakies", the informants used by the IRT to spy on union activities, attacked Quill and five other unionists in a tunnel as they were returning from picketing the IRT's offices. Arrested for inciting to riot, Quill came off as a fighter in his defense of the charges, which were eventually dismissed.

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Quill was closely associated with the Communist Party from the outset, but proved rebellious as well. When the Third Period gave way to the Popular Front era, Santo and Hogan directed O'Shea and Quill to abandon efforts to form a new union and to run instead for office in the IRT company union, the Interborough Brotherhood. Quill denounced the plan vociferously, to the point that he was nearly expelled from the union. Quill came around, however, by the next party meeting and began attending Brotherhood meetings — while still recruiting workers there to joint the TWU.

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Given the level of surveillance, and consistent with the conspiratorial traditions of Irish political movements, the union proceeded clandestinely, forming small groups of trusted friends in order to keep informers at bay, meeting in isolated locations and in subway tunnels. Those few workers, such as Quill, who were willing to accept identification as union activists also spread the word about the new union by handing out flyers and delivering soapbox speeches in front of company facilities. After a year of organizing, the union formed a Delegates Council, made up of representatives from sections of the system.

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In the meantime the new union continued its patient organizing campaign, conducting a number of brief strikes over workplace conditions, but avoiding any large-scale confrontations. That changed on January 23, 1937, when the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) fired two union members at the Kent Avenue powerhouse plant in Brooklyn for union activity. The union launched a successful sitdown strike two days later that solidified the union's support among BMT employees, helped lead to its overwhelming victory in an NLRB-conducted election among the IRT's 13,500 employees later that year and helped bring thousands of other transit employees into the union.

Related Topics:
January 23 - 1937 - Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation - Brooklyn - Sitdown strike - NLRB

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