Transport Workers Union of America Local 2001 Files

The Transport Workers Union of America [TWU] was founded by New York City subway workers in 1934, and then expanded to represent other transit employees across the United States. Their largest Local is Local 100, whose membership consists of New York City's mass transit workers. TWU also represents flight attendants, grounds crew, and maintenance workers for a number of airlines as well as employees of Amtrak, ConRail, and a few short line railroads.



The TWU was one of the first unions to join the Congress of Industrial Organizations [CIO], and was known for its left-leaning politics. One of TWU's founders and its first president, Mike Quill, was a close ally of the Communist Party USA before renouncing all ties in 1948. The TWU was also unique among railroad and transit unions in that it fostered close ties with the African-American community and the NAACP, included quotas for the hiring of African-Americans in its collective bargaining agreements, and supported a strong civil rights platform which advocated for a national platform to combat racism as well as combating the racism found among its own members.



TWU started representing railway employees in 1954 when the United Railroad Workers of America [URRWA] on the Pennsylvania Railroad [PRR] voted to join the TWU. The URRWA was itself an outgrowth of the CIO's United Railway Organizing Committee, which was chartered in 1941 to organize non-operating employees on the railways. The Committee organized many different non-operating crafts, including carmen, car inspectors, food service workers, maintenance of way, and maintenance of equipment employees. Like the TWU, the URRWA was committed to strong union ideals, promoting racial equality, fighting discrimination, and serving as a counterpoint to the railroad brotherhoods of the AFL. The URRWA represented around 40,000 employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad; in order to increase their negotiating power, the Committee voted to affiliate with the TWU, thus forming the Railroad Division of the TWU.



In 1955, TWU Local 2001 was chartered to represent the members on the PRR, which included the employees of the PRR owned Hudson and Manhattan Railroad. During the mergers among carriers that occurred over the next few decades, TWU Local 2001 came to represent employees on the PATH system, formerly the Hudson and Manhattan; employees on the PennCentral, comprised of the PRR, the New York Central, and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad; and the successors to the PennCentral, Amtrak and Conrail as well as New Jersey Transit and MetroNorth.



Currently, TWU Local 2001 represents roughly 1,600 railroaders on seven different railroads in four states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.



For more information, see History TWU Local 2001 http://local2001.twu.org/history/