UCLA

Despite the confluence of public transit rider and transit worker issues, few American transit justice efforts have involved alliances between workers and riders. Spurred by a contemporary resurgence in labor-community partnerships, this thesis identifies what led to the formation of transit justice alliances in the Oakland East Bay Area at AC Transit (ACT) involving the transit workers’ union, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192. I document the union’s changing relationships between the ridership, elected officials, and transit management from the founding of ACT’s predecessor Key System in 1903 to three distinct worker-rider coalitions that formed between the 1990s and 2023. These collaborative campaigns included protesting against service cuts and fare hikes, filing joint transit justice litigation, supporting the election of proactive board members dedicated to continued engagement with workers and riders, and creating rank-and-file initiatives to secure hazard pay during the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that in an era of austerity causing American public transit’s overall decline, the successes and losses of transit workers’ unions and riders have been, and will remain, intertwined– solidarity or not.