New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) Records

Founded in 1998, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) is a union that supports taxi drivers in New York. The NYTWA was founded by members of the Lease Drivers Coalition, an advocacy project of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (now known as CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities). The NYTWA has challenged and reformed numerous anti-worker policies and regulations in the taxi industry through legal advocacy, health education, and campaigns fighting for safety and economic justice for taxi workers. In 2004, the NYTWA implemented the first-ever Living Wage standard for US taxi drivers. It also negotiated the inclusion of taxi drivers in 9/11 federal disaster assistance, and provided discounted or pro bono legal, financial management, and health services to taxi drivers.

The NYTWA currently has over 25,000 members, a majority of whom are South Asian. In 2011, the organization became the fifty-seventh affiliate of the AFL-CIO, and NYTWA Founding Executive Director Bhairavi Desai was elected to their Executive Board Council. Desai continues to lead the NYTWA.

Containing minutes and agendas from its organizing committee meetings, strategy documents, legal case files, flyers, posters, photographs, membership forms, driver surveys, and press kits, the NYTWA Records offer rich historical documentation of an active labor union’s fight for “justice, rights, respect, and dignity” through legal advocacy and strategic, collective action.

To learn more about the contents of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance Records, located at the NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, view the collection’s finding aid.

Image credit: Lease Drivers Coalition Banner, circa 1997; New York Taxi Workers Alliance Records; WAG 319; Box: 5; Folder: 23; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.