A closer look

New York City Taxi Drivers

Why did many South Asian immigrant men in New York City become taxi drivers and labor activists during the 1980s and 1990s?

by Rohma Khan, ACLS Fellow, University of California, Davis

South Asian Immigration to the United States

Among the first South Asian migrants to America were Punjabi (both Sikh and Muslim) farmers, who settled in California in the late nineteenth century. They entered the nation to try their luck in the “land of opportunity,” but South Asian men found themselves in the midst of anti-Asian hysteria. Around the same time, Muslim peddlers from the area now referred to as West Bengal, arrived in New Orleans and moved to other major cities such as Detroit, New York, and Baltimore.

South Asian immigrants, however, did not arrive in significant numbers in the United States until the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which abolished national origins quotas and lifted an immigration ban from Asia that had been in place since 1917. The 1965 Immigration Act established a clear preference for admitting migrants with high levels of educational achievement, notably in the fields of science and medicine. This prioritization resulted in a deliberate “brain drain” of professionals from less developed countries. By the mid-1970s, the majority of physicians and surgeons entering the United States were migrants from less developed nations.

Working-class South Asians finally had a turn to migrate to America in larger numbers in the late 1970s and ’80s, and a sizable portion of migrants entered after the Immigration Act of 1990 established Diversity Visas (also known as the “green card lottery”) and encouraged immigration from a broader list of countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh.

New York City and a Changing Taxi Industry

South Asian men who migrated from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India chiefly came to the United States to take advantage of better labor and educational opportunities. Their arrival occurred at the same time that the regulation of taxicabs in New York City changed and the demand for drivers in the city grew. Prior to the late 1970s, the taxi industry mainly operated as a commission system, in which cabs were owned by fleets and companies, and drivers received weekly paychecks, job security, vacations, and other benefits. Economic recession in the 1970s prompted many taxi fleets to sell their medallion licenses (the plaques affixed to yellow cabs that gives the legal right for taxis to operate in the city), to individual drivers. In 1979, the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) permitted taxi owners to lease cabs to potential drivers. Within a few years, daily leasing of taxis dominated the industry, classifying drivers as independent contractors and stripping them of benefits previously offered to cab drivers. Drivers began their shifts with a deficit, as they had to lease their cabs each day and then work long hours to cover the expenses of fees and gas. By the end of a grueling, twelve-hour shift, drivers often did not make enough of a profit to cover their costs. These changes led many drivers who had been working within the previous taxi system to look for other work, leaving the labor pool wide open for recent immigrants who needed employment.

By the late 1990s, South Asians made up over 40 percent of the taxi drivers in New York City. The idea of working independently without a boss or supervisor attracted many men to cab driving. In 1996, for the first time since 1937, the city held an auction to sell medallions to help close a city budget deficit. Of the fifty-three medallions that were sold, forty-three were purchased by South Asian drivers. For immigrants, obtaining a medallion was a step toward achieving the American Dream. Those who could not afford to invest over 0,000 for a medallion in the late 1990s still found the prospect of unsupervised work attractive, but they would soon discover that cab driving involved considerable risks to their livelihoods.

Resistance and Labor Organizing

While they were prepared to make ends meet on the streets of New York City, cab drivers did not anticipate that, in addition to labor exploitation, they would encounter racial profiling, discrimination, and violence in their new world. After a wave of anti-Asian violence in the 1980s and ’90s, the Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV) formed to alert community members to dangers in the city. The CAAAV regularly reported local and national incidents of violence and even formed a Lease Drivers Coalition (LDC). Through the LDC, cab drivers demanded safe working conditions and insisted that the TLC address the harassment of Muslim drivers that followed the World Trade Center bombings of 1993. Unsurprisingly, violence and profiling resurged after 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act. Along with the Muslim community of drivers, Sikh men were suspected as terrorists and wrongfully surveilled and detained by law enforcement. Even community-based organizations that advocated for civil liberties (such as the CAAAV) came under suspicion because of the ethnic composition of their members.

The work of the LDC also prepared drivers to take other steps to secure their rights. In 1998, drivers established the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) in response to the escalating violence of the previous decades and the increased fines proposed by the TLC. Led by South Asian activist Bhairavi Desai, the NYTWA planned a citywide strike to take place on May 13, 1998. The purpose of the strike was to empower drivers to demand economic rights and protest the TLC’s new rule changes. Allied organizations in support of the strike released their own memos and detailed how the proposed changes would affect drivers, noting that violations that previously resulted in to 0 fines would be increased to 0 to 00. Though the taxi industry was fragmented along lines of race, ethnicity, and language, the shared burden of deep financial strain struck a chord among all drivers.

The NYTWA worked diligently to frame the labor struggle as one shared by all drivers, and 98 percent of yellow cab drivers participated in the strike for fair working conditions. Some taxi fleet owners actively attempted to dissuade drivers from engaging in the strike by claiming that it was no longer happening [document 5]. The mayor’s office, in an attempt to break the strike, sought to hire drivers who regularly serviced the outer boroughs of the city (known as livery drivers) to pick up passengers in Manhattan, but this effort largely failed due to the NYTWA’s broad support base that extended to the livery drivers. This resistance in such significant numbers was credited to South Asian drivers who formed a central point of organizing for an industry that lacked a cohesive network for activism. While the strike did not result in an immediate repeal of the TLC’s proposed fines, the union power that was harnessed during the May 1998 demonstration resulted in later victories that established living-wage standards, fair raises, and support for the shared plights of ride-sharing drivers from Uber and Lyft. By keeping the focus on shared burdens, the NYTWA continued to support all drivers in the city in staking a claim for fair labor.

Reflection Questions

What made taxi driving an appealing opportunity for immigrants from South Asia?

What challenges did licensed taxi drivers face in New York City in the 1990s?

How were taxi drivers able to mobilize in 1998 against new rules imposed by New York City?

How do the conditions faced by taxi drivers decades ago, and their collective actions, connect to the current challenges experienced by those who drive for Uber, Lyft, and other ride services?

Additional Reading

Rohma Khan, “Cab Fair: Taxi Driving and South Asian Labor Activism in New York City, 1985–1999,” Labor History 59, no. 6 (2018): 676–91.

Biju Mathew, Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.

Uzma Quraishi, Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston during the Cold War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).

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