The Chicago Transit Authority Wildcat Strike In 1968

The Chicago Transit Authority Wildcat Strike In 1968
http://blip.tv/labor-beat/the-cta-strike-of-1968-5454759
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Labor Beat: The CTA Strike of 1968
We can't find any documentary about this on the Internet, so this may be the only one in existence about the Chicago Transit Authority (wildcat) strike of 1968. There is no wonder that official Chicago history has somehow buried this story in a deep crypt, but we have brought it back into the daylight of 2011, along with rare archival stills and film footage, and exclusive interviews with now retired CTA drivers who played key roles. Here is the 60s Civil Rights movement intersecting with the class struggle in a big North American city, engaging a major public sector employer. Adding to this mix was the fact that many of the drivers were returned Viet Nam veterans with combat experience and not inclined to back down from a fight. Now back in Chicago, the drivers confronted racism not only in the bus company but in the company union (warning: coarse language in video). "You could stand up in that union hall -- McNamara was the President -- at Van Buren and Ashland. Before you opened your mouth - whack! - you're out of order," recalls Rodgers Harmon, ret. 36 years CTA bus driver. "We didn't have any real representation in the union...the strike was not so much against the CTA, it was against the union with no representation," recalls Claude Brown, ret. CTA Bus Driver. The wildcat strike was on, and the drivers learned how to develop community support. Standish E. Willis, then CTA driver and today a criminal defense attorney, remembers: "We started drawing upon the leadership in the broader community. So we had Operation PUSH (Breadbasket at the time). We would reach out to celebrities...I remember Gale Sayers...Dick Gregory...I went personally and brought Muhammad Ali to the rally. But the significant thing is that we reached out to the community by developing car pools similar to what happened in Montgomery at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, and we would take our personal cars and drive them up and down the main thoroughfares in the areas we had closed down -- the West Side and the South Side -- picking up people, getting them to the next stop. What that allowed us to do is to explain what the strike was about...and to get support in the broader African-American community." Length - 27:47 Produced by Labor Beat. Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. Labor Beat is a non-profit 501(c)(3) member of IBEW 1220. Views are those of the producer Labor Beat. For info: mail@laborbeat.org, www.laborbeat.org. 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video, YouTube, or blip.tv and search "Labor Beat". Labor Beat has regular cable slots in Chicago, Evanston, Rockford, Urbana, IL; St. Louis, MO; Princeton, NJ; and Rochester, NY. For more detailed information, send us a request at mail@laborbeat.org