Almost 30 years ago, as Richard J. Daley was preparing to host the Democratic National Convention, a large sector of the City That Works stopped working. More than half of the CTA’s bus drivers were African-American, and for weeks they had been fighting what they considered unfair union representation. At 12:01 on the night of August 25, 1968, the black drivers turned off the lights on their vehicles and headed back to the CTA bus barns, beginning a two-week strike that shut down 52 of the city’s 128 bus routes and effectively paralyzed the south and west sides.
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Drivers from other stations heard about the “sick day” and contacted Willis, who began holding meetings in the kitchen of his west-side apartment. As interest grew, the meetings were moved to churches and schools, representatives were chosen, and the black drivers, organizing under the name Concerned Transit Workers, drew up a list of demands to present to the union and the CTA. “The way we operated was a great model in terms of trade union democracy,” says Willis. “Anytime a decision was made, we always had a mass meeting where people could hear and express. Our leaders couldn’t move without getting guidance from our guys. Considering that nobody had any prior training, we did pretty well.”
As a result the CTW staged a five-day strike that ended only when Mayor Daley promised to address issues of bus maintenance and cleanliness. But nothing happened. The local offered CTW members some newly created management posts, but these were rejected as tokenism. “Some of the guys were thinking that our guys had been outnegotiated,” Willis remembers, “that Daley had outsmarted them in hopes that we wouldn’t be able to pull our ranks together again.” The CTW spent the following weeks negotiating with Hill and at the same time filing suit with the international union to remove him, but neither tactic worked. The CTW voted to resume the strike on August 25, and its members fanned out to the city’s bus barns to spread the news.
Three months after the strike ended, Local 241 approved a new contract that called for moderate pay raises and little else. A year later the CTA adopted a new set of regulations that included as grounds for dismissal “engaging in conversation derogatory to the authority, its officials, or other employees” and “leading fellow employees into a wildcat strike, attempting to create such a strike, or participating in such a strike.” But the strike had heightened interest in the union, and eventually the African-American membership took over the local, winning a majority on the executive board.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Standish Willis/ photo by Nathan Mandell; August 25, 1968 photo/ Chicago Sun-Times.
