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.

Further Reading

• Freeman, Joshua B., In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in New York City, 1933-1966, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Quill, Shirley, Mike Quill, Himself : a Memoir, Greenwich, Connecticut: Devin-Adair, 1985
• Whittemore, L.H., The Man Who Ran the Subways; The Story of Mike Quill, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968