Bill Lindauer

Bill Lindauer

Bill Lindauer is a born and bred New Yorker. He grew up in the Bronx and attended Stuyvesant High School and Northeastern University in Boston. Lindauer began driving a cab in the 1970s after working in editing and reporting. Lindauer retired in 2010 and is currently on the Organizing Committee at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

During the interview, Lindauer relates many stories of interacting with passengers and with the every-changing New York City. Much of the interview focuses around his work with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and the political landscape of New York City from the 1970s until today. As a veteran driver, Lindauer speaks of the growing challenges and struggles that drivers face including safety concerns and violence, health problems, stress, and navigating the complicated industry as an immigrant.

March 24, 2011

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We ask researchers and public viewers to understand the following:

1. These interviews were conducted keeping in mind the General Principles & Best Practices for Oral History provided by the Oral History Association (2009). The Oral History Association states that those using oral histories “should strive for intellectual honesty and the best application of the skills of their discipline. They should avoid stereotypes, misrepresentations, and manipulations of the narrator’s words. This includes foremost striving to retain the integrity of the narrator’s perspective, recognizing the subjectivity of the interview, and interpreting and contextualizing the narrative according to the professional standards of the applicable scholarly disciplines.”

2. As we believe that the audio version of an oral history is the primary source and contains important silences and intonations, we have provided access to the full length audio interviews on this website. As these interviews contain verbal stammers, repetitions, stutters and grammatical mistakes that are natural when conversing, please be respectful of this when listening to and quoting from these interviews.

4. The New York City Taxi Driver Oral History Project is a documentation project and is designed to document the voices and perspectives of selected taxi drivers at a given moment in the history of the NYC taxi industry. The project directors have not and do not intend to cast judgment, interpret, or draw conclusions based on these interviews.

5. The opinions and perspectives recorded as part of The New York City Taxi Driver Oral History Project reflect only those viewpoints of the drivers themselves. The project directors do not necessarily share any of the opinions voiced by the interviewees.

6. Citations must take the following form:

"Narrator’s Name," in The New York City Taxi Driver Oral History Project, Item #, http://nyctaxisoralhistory.com/project (accessed Month Day, Year).

Audio

English

Margaret Fraser, Samantha Gibson

Bill Lindauer

New York Taxi Workers Alliance, New York, NY

WAV

1:22:09

1,411.2 kbit/s

Start - 10:00: background, getting into the industry,

10:00 – 20:00: media and public perception, other drivers and community at the garage, accidents and stress of the job,

20:00 – 30:00: challenges organizing the cab industry, airport cab lots, strikes, union organizing, Local 3036, health issues, taxi relief stands, tickets,

30:00 – 40:00: access to bathrooms, TLC, fare increases, Matthew W. Daus (former chairman of the TLC), politicians, recent trip to lobby in Albany for the Taxi Driver Protection Act

40:00 – 50:00: safety concerns and violence against drivers, ethnicity and racism, September 11, constant changes in New York City, immigrants in the industry

50:00 – 1:00:00: Mayor Bloomberg and plan to legalize street hails in outer boroughs, outer borough plan and connection to mayor’s actions in recent snowstorm, credit card machines and cost to drivers, problems with GPS system

1:00:00 – 1:10:00: returning possessions to passengers, famous passengers, conversations with passengers, family, stresses of the industry, failure of the city government to protect drivers

1:20:00 – end: dangers on the job, Bhairavi Desai and the Ford Foundation Award, struggles of the Alliance, TLC