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New York Taxi Workers Alliance Records

Call Number

WAG.319

Dates

1972-2011, inclusive
; 1997-2010, bulk

Creator

New York Taxi Workers Alliance
New York Taxi Workers Alliance (Role: Donor)

Extent

13 Linear Feet in 12 record cartons, 1 manuscript box and 1 oversized flat box
2 websites in 2 archived websites.

Language of Materials

Materials are primarily in English. Some materials in the collection have been translated into Spanish, Urdu, and other Indo-European languages.

Abstract

The New York Taxi Workers' Alliance was founded in 1998 by members of the Lease Drivers Coalition (LDC), an advocacy project of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV). The union, led by Executive Director Bhairavi Desai since its inception, fights for structural change in the taxi driving industry, regularly ranked by the Department of Labor as one of the most dangerous job in the country. The NYTWA supports drivers through legal advocacy, health benefits, and numerous campaigns fighting for safety and economic justice for taxi workers. Because taxi drivers are considered independent contractors, they cannot engage in collective bargaining. Despite this impediment, the NYTWA claims it has increased taxi drivers' incomes by 35%-45%, including implementation of the first-ever Living Wage standard for US taxi drivers in 2004. The records of the New York Taxi Workers' Alliance document the organization from its growth out of the Lease Driver Coalition (an initiative of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence) in 1998 to its 2012 status as a national union and a member of the AFL-CIO in 2010. The records illusrtate the growth of the union in membership, funding, and media coverage, and the specific challenges of 21st century labor organizing in a transient and ethnically diverse population. The collection primarily documents the two major activities of the union: campaigns and legal services.

New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) History

The New York Taxi Workers' Alliance was founded in 1998 by members of the Lease Drivers Coalition (LDC), an advocacy project of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV). The union, led by Executive Director Bhairavi Desai since its inception, fights for structural change in the taxi driving industry, regularly ranked by the Department of Labor as one of the most dangerous job in the country. The NYTWA supports drivers through legal advocacy, health education, and numerous campaigns fighting for safety and economic justice for taxi workers. Because taxi drivers are considered independent contractors, the union cannot engage in collective bargaining.

Despite this limitation, the NYTWA uses legislation, work-stoppage strikes, demonstrations, and petitions to affect change. They mobilize drivers and build membership through meetings, outreach and fairs in airport waiting lots, industry research, organizational partnerships, and assisting drivers with tickets and fines. The NYTWA claims it has increased taxi drivers' incomes by 35%-45%, including advocating for the implementation of the first-ever Living Wage standard for US taxi drivers in 2004.

In May 1998, four months after their formation, the NYTWA organized a 24-hour strike of thousands of licensed taxi drivers in protest of proposed Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) regulations that would quadruple liability-insurance costs, increase fines and probationary periods for new drivers, and increase the frequency of drug and alcohol testing for drivers. The NYTWA demanded a moratorium on the new rules, an in-depth study of the taxi industry, and an end to double ticketing (the practice of issuing multiple tickets at the same time for similar driving infractions). Though the strike did not affect immediate change on TLC regulations, it was influential because it solidified the NYTWA as a union and was able to bring together workers from a notoriously segmented group with no central point of organization.

Early organizing activity for the union includes City Council Bill 472, which fought against TLC codes of conduct for drivers (primarily regarding license revoking procedures) which the council ruled to be "onerous" on drivers. Another early campaign fought against the long wait times drivers faced at the Queen Boulevard TLC Office, which took valuable time out of a drivers' average 60-hour work week. The NYTWA focused their efforts in the early 2000s on studying the impact of September 11, 2001 on taxi drivers and New York City immigrants and subsequent relief efforts (including federal disaster assistance for taxi drivers).

During the mid-2000s, the union focused on the detrimental effects new taxi technology (malfunctioning credit card machines, the loss of 5% on fares from credit card use, and GPS tracking) had on driver earnings and individual rights. They also worked to raise the wages of drivers through economic justice campaigns, which fought for fare increases, caps on the cost of leasing cars and medallions, and for a fuel surcharge on all fares.

Union activity in the late 2000s concentrated on health initiatives; Intro 705, a bill which allowed drivers to choose credit card machine operators; and the Taxi Driver Protection Act, which called for heavier penalties for assaults on drivers and a sticker in each taxi warning of these penalties.

The NYTWA also spends much of its resources on providing discounted or pro bono legal, financial management, and health services for its members. The NYTWA claims a membership of 16,000 drivers and was voted into the New York City Central Labor Council in 2007 as the first non-collective bargaining agent member of a Central Labor Council in the US. Together with the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania, the union hosted a conference of international taxi unions in 2007, which resulted in the creation of the National Taxi Workers Alliance, now headquartered at the NYTWA.

History of Taxicabs in New York City

Despite the iconic status of yellow cabs in the city of New York, documentation of the industry and its workers is sparse. The transitory nature of the industry and its history of union creation, corruption, and short-lived organizing efforts made it both hard to organize, and hard to document. Henry Allen started the first taxi fleet in New York City in 1907 (The New York Taxicab Company), with the first organizing and strike efforts taking place just one year later over the cost of uniform rentals and gas prices.

By the Great Depression there were more cabs on the streets of New York than there are in 2013 (about 16,000 in 1932 compared to 13,000 in 2013). To regulate this number, the city passed the Haas Act and introduced the medallion system. A medallion licenses a car to pick up and taxi passengers in New York City. By restricting the number of medallions, rather than driver licenses, the city can regulate the number of taxicabs on the streets of New York. More than half of the medallions created went to fleet owners who rent cars and medallions to licensed drivers for two shifts a day. The rest of the medallions were reserved for driver-owners, who are required to drive for a certain number of shifts before they can lease the medallion. The Act allowed for the transfer of medallions between owners and since the number of medallions did not increase until 1996, the cost increased exponentially. The cost was around $10 in 1937. By 2012, medallions sold for almost $1 million.

In 1971, the city created the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) to regulate the taxi and limousine industry, which had previously been under the jurisdiction of the New York City police department. The TLC is in charge of licensing and regulating the taxi industry while the NYPD enforces traffic laws. Thus, New York City taxi drivers must be aware of the rules and regulations of several agencies: The Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), the New York City Police Department (NYPD), and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

In 1979, the city legalized the leasing system. This system chaged drivers' status from employee to independent contractor. Instead of receiving a percentage of the days' earnings, drivers now pay a set amount to lease the car and medallion for the day or week. Over the next few years, all garages moved to the leasing system. Since then, taxi drivers lease cars (and their medallions) from fleet garages or brokers by the day or by the week. A "DOV" driver (Driver Owned Vehicle) owns their vehicle but rents the medallion from the broker. By 2011, there were over 13,000 medallions and almost 50,000 licensed cab drivers. Since the retirement of the iconic "checker cab" in New York, most taxicabs were Ford Crown Victorias, one of the cheapest options of the TLC-approved cars until the 2010s. Because the Crown Victoria was discontinued in 2011, the TLC and Mayor Bloomberg introduced the Taxi of Tomorrow plan, which plans to replace all existing cars with an approved Nissan design from 2013-2018. The plan was controversial because the approved Nissan was neither an hybrid, nor was it wheel-chair accessible.

The taxi industry has always employed the recent immigrant population in New York City, though the proportion of drivers born outside of the U.S. increased dramatically in the last quarter of the 20th century. By 2005, less than 10% of drivers were born inside of the U.S. and the majority came from the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. This demographic composition has a wide-ranging impact on the industry and its patterns of organizing.

Arrangement

This collection has been arranged into four series:

Series I: Campaigns, 1994-2010
Series II: Legal, 1998-2010
Series III: Administrative, 1974-2011
Series IV: Archived Websites, 2009-ongoing

Scope and Content Note

The records of the New York Taxi Workers' Alliance document the organization from its growth out of the Lease Driver Coalition (an initiative of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence) in 1998 to its 2012 status as a national union and a member of the AFL-CIO in 2010. The records illusrtate the growth of the union in membership, funding, and media coverage, and the specific challenges of 21st century labor organizing in a transient and ethnically diverse population. The collection primarily documents the two major activities of the union: campaigns and legal services.

Without collective bargaining, campaigns are the major way the NYTWA affects change in the industry. Since its founding in 1998, the NYTWA has initiated numerous campaigns working toward increasing the wage of drivers, advocating for driver health and safety, fighting against TLC rules and regulations, and increasing public awareness of industry issues. The NYTWA provides discounted or pro-bono legal assistance to aid drivers in understanding and navigating the constantly changing traffic regulations and complicated TLC court system, in addition to the multiple city agencies they contend with on a daily basis, The Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), the New York City Police Department (NYPD), and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

Materials that document these campaigns include New York City Council outreach, flyers and distribution materials for drivers and the general public, proposed bills and legislation, internal workplans, industry research and clippings, and driver surveys. The records document their interactions with the media, drivers, the NYTWA Organizing Committee, and partnerships with related organizations.

Through these records, researchers can find information about evolving transportation technologies, the impact of September 11, 2001 on South Asian workers and the transportation industry, taxi drivers in the media, the rising cost of medallions, the effects of the legal system on the immigrant population of New York, changing traffic laws and restrictions, industry-specific health concerns, and efforts to educate the public about the industry.

Also represented in this collection are the many organizations that operate within the taxi industry. The NYTWA is the only group that advocates for and consists of taxi drivers themselves. There are several realted organizations that fight for taxi garages and medallion owners, including The Metropolitan Taxi Cab Board of Trade (MTBOT), Committee for Taxi Safety, and Greater New York Taxi Association. Over time, the NYTWA's working relationships with related organizations evolved. In particular, the NYTWA works more closely with the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) under the leadership of Commissioner Yassky (2010-2017), in comparison with Commissioner Daus (2001-2010). The NYTWA also initiated partnerships with other organizations to aid in campaign work and research projects, including the Brennan Center for Justice, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Urban Justice Center.

Due to the small size of the NYTWA office staff and its use of email and phone communication, the collection contains little documentation of internal office interactions. This is also apparent in the lack of internal structure visible in the records themselves. Operating with only a few full time employees, the small staff performed all tasks in the organization – answering phones, doing research and outreach, writing articles, and attending meetings. Evidence of the fast paced office and makeshift orgnaizational strategies can be seen in the way that documents were used and reused. Most pieces of paper have been used for multiple purposes and passed through many hands – an unused flyer about one campaign became paper for taking notes about another. The documents reflect the nature of working in a reactive environment with less time for planning and internal organization. Instead, staff and volunteers for the NYTWA focused on how to affect the most change in a rapidly evolving industry.

Conditions Governing Access

The following types of records are closed until January 1, 2026: active campaign documents, internal industry analysis, and organizational planning documents.

Some material in Series II: Legal, relating to legal advocacy cases in support of individual members, have been redacted to ensure the privacy of these individuals. Names, addresses, phone numbers, hack numbers, and other information which might identify individuals have been blacked out.

The remainder of the collection is open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection, created by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.

Preferred Citation

Identification of item, date; New York Taxi Workers Alliance Records; WAG 319; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

To cite the archived website in this collection: Identification of item, date; New York Taxi Workers Alliance Records; WAG 319; Wayback URL; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, 2011. The accession number associated with this gift is 2011.037. Another small donation of recent NYTWA publications was made in 2013.

https://www.nytwa.org/ was initially selected by curators and captured through the use of The California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service in 2009 as part of the Labor Unions and Organizations (U.S.) Web Archive. In November 2015, the archived website was migrated to Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. In December 2022, https://twitter.com/NYTWA/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2023.004.

Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures

Access CDs for audiovisual materials in the collection are available by appointment for reading room viewing and listening only.

Appraisal Note

Personnel materials and membership lists with identifying information have been removed from the collection and returned to the NYTWA. Book titles already housed in the Tamiment Library collection were also returned.

Take Down Policy

Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.

If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.

If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to the special.collections@nyu.edu.

Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.

Related Archival Materials

Taxi Rank and File Coalition Oral History Collection OH 013
New York City Taxi Drivers' Union Oral History Collection OH 028
United Taxi Workers Organizing Committee Records WAG 005
Taxi Rank and File Coalition Records WAG 139

Bibliography

Fine, Janice. Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2006.
Hodges, Graham Russell. Taxi!: A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Mathew, Biju. Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.
Schaller Consulting. The New York City Taxicab Fact Book. Brooklyn, NY: Schaller Consulting, 2006.

Collection processed by

Margaret Fraser in 2013

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-09-08 10:55:57 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: English

Processing Information

Due to the nature of the NYTWA office, many of the records came to the archive loose or in unlabeled folders. The original order did show some grouping based on NYTWA campaigns and organizing efforts, and the collection was organized and given folder titles by the archivist with these groupings in mind. The collection was rehoused in acid-free folders and boxes. Photographs were removed from albums and developing envelopes and placed in protective sleeves in the same order. Descriptive information on post-it notes were photocopied and replaced.

Some of the folders in this collection contained personal information such as names, license numbers, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and hack numbers. This information was redacted with permanent marker in instances where this could be easily done without compromising the information contained in the records.

In 2014, the archived website was added as Series IV. Additional website was added in 2023.

Revisions to this Guide

January 2023: Edited by Nicole Greenhouse to reflect additional administrative information and added archived websites
September 2023: Edited by Anna Björnsson McCormick to update the number of series in the arrangement note

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012