At the start of the 20th Century, labor relations in Philadelphia were hardly reflective of the meaning of the city’s name, brotherly love. 


In 1910, a six-week trolley carmen’s strike against the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (PRT) turned into a citywide general strike when 100,000 Philadelphia workers walked off their jobs in sympathy with the carmen. A decade later, one of the most pitiful scams played out by Mitten Management, then in control of the PRT, employed a network of spies to prevent independent unionization on its property and conned employees with a phony stock ownership plan which ended in bankruptcy during the Great Depression.


TWU chartered a local in 1937 but the newly regenerated Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC) fought hard to keep TWU from succeeding for seven years. With the help of Philadelphia’s conniving mayor, John E. Reyburn, the PTC took advantage of drawn out litigation processes, organized its own workers and refused to recognize that the people had chosen TWU. 


On February 22, 1943 TWU rechartered the PTC group as Local 234. Organizer J.J. Fitzsimon got 1,000 company union members to resign and join TWU in only three days. By June, almost 4,000 PTC employees had signed up with the TWU and the union filed for an election that month. But the PTC held up the procedure through court litigation for almost an entire year.


On November 1, 1943, the company threatened to fire any employees who wore a TWU button on company premises. Employees refused to remove the buttons, prompting a stoppage that spread throughout the Philadelphia system, a threat to the war effort in the middle of World War II. The federal government pressured both sides to negotiate which led to arbitration and to a scheduled TWU election for March 1944. 


Threatened by the obvious support TWU had gained by standing up to the PTC on behalf of workers, the PTC tried to incite a racist backlash by exploiting the issue of the government- ordered promotions of black workers to operating jobs on the trolley train. The PTC accused TWU’s strong commitment to racial equality of being subversive and radical and hired sound trucks to drive around with a message accusing TWU of forcing “Negro supremacy on the company.” They put racist notices on the company bulletin board and allowed Ku Klux Klan stickers on vehicles.


“When we first came to Philadelphia, it was the red issue. Now it’s the black issue. From red to black, no matter what the issue, our only issue is wages, hours, pay and working conditions,” TWU President Mike Quill said in response to the attacks. 


The PTC promoted a wildcat strike in August, 1944, a few months after TWU won representation, to protest the Union’s defense of African-Americans’ right to job promotions. TWU officers encouraged PTC employees to continue working, but the strike was clearly a company strategy to destroy the TWU agreement. The strike had major effects on the city; it tied up Philadelphia transit system for five days, violated the labor’s no-strike pledge taken for the duration of World War II, and, because Philadelphia was at the center of the country’s war production, jeopardized America’s military effort.


President Franklin Roosevelt sent in federal troops and with the help of the TWU full service was restored to Philadelphia on August 6. A federal grand jury indicted 30 of the phony strike leaders and condemned the company for its role in the wildcat strike, but neither the PTC President nor any other company official was ever punished.


On August 9, 1944 PTC finally signed its first contract with the TWU enabling Local 234 to begin building and consolidating its organization. J.B. Dougherty, a bus operator and chairman of the successful organizing drive, was elected the Local’s first president. In spite of wartime government wage controls, TWU secured important fringe benefits and cash bonuses.


By the end of 1950, Local 234 had engaged in two strikes, three near strikes, secured two contracts for its members, including the first ever two-year agreement under the TWU banner, and won a crucial union shop agreement requiring membership in the union as a condition of employment. 


Today, TWU has several locals with thousands of members in Philadelphia who run and maintain the S.E.P.T.A. city and commuter operations, as well as several parking companies around the city.