Mike Quill

Who was Mike Quill?

Michael Joseph Quill was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America, 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. He drove his former allies out of the union as they tried to control the union rather than continue to help it.

Quill had varying relations with the mayors of New York City. He was a personal friend of Robert F. Wagner, Jr. but could find no common ground with Wagner's successor, John Lindsay, or as Quill called him "Linsley", and led a twelve-day transit strike in 1966 against him that landed him in jail. However, he won significant wage increases for his members. He died of a heart attack three days after the end of the strike.