Fight the Man!: 8 Defining Strikes in New York City History
Transit Strikes of 1966, 1980, 2005
Man, the 60s were a tough time in New York. Everyone talks about the 70s as being harsh, but the 60s had the sanitation strike, the transit strike, AND the teachers strike (more on that later.) And as much as I would hate—HATE—to have to deal with a garbage strike, let’s face it, take away our subways and you’ve got a city on its knees.
The 1966 strike was notable for being the first citywide transportation strike in New York’s history. The Transport Workers Union was asking for your typical things—money, vacation days, etc.—and was led by Michael Quill, a fiery Irishman who was arrested at the start of the strike, only to tell the court, “The judge can drop dead in his black robes. I don’t care if I rot in jail. I will not call off the strike.” Unfortunately, it was Quill who died of complications from a heart attack just weeks after the strike ended. This strike also marked the passage of the Taylor Law, which prohibits and severely penalizes public workers in New York from walking out on their jobs.
The 1980 strike lasted eleven days in April of that year, as workers demanded raises and cost-of-living adjustments. The strikers achieved their goals, but the MTA lost so much money during the work-stoppage that, immediately after the strike ended, the cost of a token went from 50 to 60 cents. Also noteworthy during the strike was Mayor Ed Koch who became inexplicably popular for walking across the Brooklyn Bridge with commuters and pestering them with the question, “How’m I doing?”
If he’d asked me that I would have said, “Wow, Ed Koch, why does it always have to be about YOU? Leave me alone. Jerk.”
The most recent strike in our collective New York memory was the 2005 transit strike that lasted for two days in December. This strike was notable for how much both sides were hated. How do you choose who’s better in the face-off between the MTA and the TWU? You don’t. You just keep your head down as you cross the Williamsburg Bridge on your way to work and wish that it was 7 years in the future and you already worked in DUMBO so that you wouldn’t have to leave the borough. Anyway. That strike was also resolved and fun was had by all because we got to walk for miles and miles and miles through the city in December of all months. With the tourists. All the slow, slow tourists.