Get to Know AFL-CIO’s Affiliates: Transport Workers
This is the next post in our series that will take a deeper look at each of our affiliates. The series will run weekly until we’ve covered all 65 of our affiliates. Next up is the Transport Workers Union (TWU).
Name of Union: Transport Workers Union of America
Mission: Moving the American economy forward, keeping the traveling public safe and offering working people a voice on the job.
Current Leadership of Union: John Samuelsen serves as international president. He was sworn in as TWU’s 10th international president in 2017, and was reelected in 2021 and 2025. He is also the former president of TWU Local 100 in New York. A Brooklyn native, Samuelsen was hired by the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) in 1993 and was assigned to a track gang in Brooklyn, where he and his fellow union members worked under difficult and unsafe conditions. Managers ignored safety regulations, disciplined workers who spoke up, and had no respect for the workers or their union. Samuelsen was still in his probationary period when his co-workers elected him shop steward, and he fought vigorously for a safer subway workplace. From 2001–2006, Samuelsen served as chair of the Track Safety Committee and chair of the Track Division. From 2002–2005, he was acting vice president of the Maintenance of Way Department. During that time, he also served as lead negotiator for all safety-related issues during contract bargaining between Local 100 and NYCTA, and authored the comprehensive track safety bill passed by the New York Legislature. He was elected president of Local 100 in 2009, and was reelected overwhelmingly in 2012 and 2015. He served as Local 100 president until 2017.
Alex Garcia serves as international executive vice president, Jerome Lafragola serves as international secretary-treasurer, and Curtis Tate and Mike Mayes serve as international administrative vice presidents.
Current Number of Members: 165,000
Members Work As: Mechanics, car cleaners, baggage handlers, disease control inspectors, bus operators, ramp agents, flight attendants and more.
Industries Represented: The airline, railroad, transit, university, utility and service industries.
History: TWU’s founding president, Michael J. Quill, formed the union in New York in 1934. It was the height of the Great Depression, and through his active, militant approach to organizing, Quill brought together thousands of the city’s transit workers to fight back against the greedy companies taking advantage of them and of the nation’s dire economic situation. The workers—underpaid, overworked and mistreated—were being hired and fired at will; several previous attempts to organize a union had failed.
With Quill at the helm, the union led strikes and sit-ins that brought the city to its knees, demonstrating once and for all that without transit workers, New York—and the entire American economy—wouldn’t move. The TWU won that battle, and they have been winning ever since.
Expanding its reach outside of New York, TWU began to organize transit and railroad workers in cities across the country in the 1940s. Later, as the nation’s fledgling aviation industry took off, TWU was right there, organizing flight attendants, baggage handlers, grounds crews and dispatchers. Soon after, public utilities providing energy to transit companies came under TWU’s protection, as did maintenance workers at colleges and universities, and civilian employees on military bases.
Looking beyond transit, health department employees and museum curators are just some of the many dynamic workers across the country who know the benefits of TWU representation. In a new century, new transportation models have begun to emerge, and TWU has brought workplace rights to bikeshare workers in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C.
At every step of the way, TWU fought for equality in the workplace, and has spoken out against discrimination based on race, job title and ethnicity ever since its founding. The TWU’s record on civil rights is unparalleled. Two of the union’s proudest moments were when Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the TWU convention in 1961 and when members marched with King in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
From Quill’s fight to open up trades and job titles to minorities in the 1930s to the contractual guarantee of maternity leave in the 1980s, the TWU has always recognized that discrimination for any reason has no business in the workplace.
Current Campaigns: TWU has a committee on political education (COPE), and has campaigns focused on toxic cabin air, fleet electrification, Amtrak reforms, assault protections for transit workers, transit operation funding, reshoring aircraft maintenance jobs and railcar safety. TWU reports on victories and provides opportunities to take action.
Community Efforts: TWU fights for civil and human rights. The Future Leaders Organizing Committee gives the next generation of union workers the tools, resources and relationships that will prepare them to take action and further workers’ rights. TWU has a Veteran’s Committee, a Working Women’s Committee and resources for retirees. TWU sponsors state conferences and a national legislative and COPE conference. TWU’s print magazine, the TWU Express, publishes four times per year. TWU provides resources for health and safety.