John Samuelsen and the art of strategic petrol bomb-throwing

John Samuelsen is always on. But in rare moments of downtime from organizing workers or traveling to organize workers, the Transport Workers Union international president likes to read.

Currently, Samuelsen is reading “Some Principles of Maritime Strategy,” the 1911 treatise by British historian Julian Corbett. “I’ve read ‘Art of War,’ unlike every other freakin’ union president that just doesn’t put it on the bookshelf behind their Zoom background,” he said over Turkish tea in southern Brooklyn, noting he’s probably read the Sun Tzu strategy book at least 20 times. But Corbett’s book on naval warfare is presenting him with new tactics to consider.

“I’m applying that to all these political fights that I’m in, where nothing is static. Everything’s changing, and reading this book on maritime law strategy has really helped me,” Samuelsen animatedly explained. “It’s really wild.”

And Samuelsen finds himself in plenty of fights. The bombastic trade unionist is known for his pugilistic public persona and imposing physical presence. But he’s also known to be basically the same guy in private as he is out on the streets. One labor operative described him as a “curmudgeon” and a “crazy uncle.” But those who have worked with him – and even against him – know Samuelsen isn’t one to be ignored.

“He would be a chess master if he isn’t already,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He’s always thinking five steps ahead, she said. That ostensibly applies to his seemingly quixotic – and increasingly personal – fights against the likes of Gov. Kathy Hochul, and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and council members planning to ban horse carriages in Central Park. Many observers just don’t see his vision – or worse, think he’s completely lost the plot.

But for Samuelsen, whose idols include the likes of TWU founder and labor icon Mike Quill and Irish radical James Connolly, the big, public and very old-school union fights are his bread and butter. While that style may be something of a dying breed in the evolving world of labor politics, Samuelsen’s brand of union leadership appears to still be working for him. Unlike other leaders of major unions in New York, he hasn’t faced a significant insurgent challenge, even after some setbacks.

Despite his over-the-top insults, dogged protests and ads so audacious they border on satire, Samuelsen insists there is a well-thought out plan. “I don’t throw petrol bombs without seriously considering why I’m throwing that petrol bomb, what my goal of throwing that petrol bomb is, what I’m trying to accomplish, what the counterpunch is going to be (and) who’s going to throw a petrol bomb back at me,” he said.

“Piss and vinegar”

Although Samuelsen came from a working-class, Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, family with two union-member parents, that wasn’t what instilled the union bug in him. And leading TWU Local 100 – let alone the roughly 165,000-member international union – isn’t necessarily where the New York City subway track worker saw himself when he first started in 1993. But that’s not to say he didn’t envision his future before it happened. Samuelsen recalled his first day of training as a track worker, when TWU Local 100 representatives came to speak.

“I immediately thought to myself, ‘These are the freakin’ guys that are running this extremely impressive union? The vaunted Transport Workers Union Local 100?’” Samuselsen said. “And I was looking at these guys. They were the most unimpressive crew of people, and I immediately thought to myself, ‘I can beat these guys, and I can do a better job than them.’” He was in his mid-20s at the time.

Track work is inherently dangerous – even more so when Samuelsen started in the ’90s. “I had to learn how to organize, and workers had to band together to prevent bosses from ordering us out – in the pursuit of production – and to work in unsafe conditions,” he recalled. And he learned quickly – his and his fellow workers’ “lives depended on it.” And he realized he was good at it. “And others realized I was good at it, and I got elected very quickly as a shop steward,” he said.

So began his ascent.

Former state Sen. Diane Savino, a lifelong member of the labor movement who chaired her chamber’s Labor Committee, first met Samuelsen when he was still a budding union leader at the turn of the century. She had enrolled in a Cornell University labor studies class to sharpen her organizing skills at the same time TWU Local 100 had sent some of its new officers to take the course – including Samuelsen.

“He was larger than life,” Savino recounted. “He was filled with piss and vinegar then.” In 2001, Samuelsen was a lower-level union officer who’d recently joined leadership on an insurgent slate led by now-former TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint. The reform slate wanted to return to the ideals of Quill they felt the leadership didn’t uphold. “He was quite a character then, (and) has been that same person ever since,” Savino said. “He’s just gone on further.”

That included challenging Toussaint for leadership of the local in 2009, and, after Toussaint dropped out of the race, Curtis Tate, Toussaint’s hand-picked successor. Samuelsen came out victorious, and held the position until he won a full term as international president in 2017. 

In the aftermath of the contentious 2009 election, Samuelsen made a conscious decision to put an end to the union’s warring factions. Tate told City & State they shared “a mutual desire to see our local united and to advance.”

“There never was any bad blood between John and I,” he said. Now the union’s international administrative vice president, Tate said he and Samuelsen maintain a close friendship and working partnership. “We actually kind of complement each other,” he said. “I’m a lot more laid back. … John is way more dynamic and animated – and sometimes I pull him back a little, so we balance each other out.”

That “dynamic” style of picking fights with management and duking it out in the court of public opinion has gained Samuelsen loyalty from his members. When then-Mayor Eric Adams backed the push to ban horse carriages last year, Samuelsen shared with City & State his text message to the mayor, calling him a “backstabber.” It was followed with a $1 million ad campaign attacking the mayor. And Samuelsen relishes confronting bosses face-to-face, like when he threatened “absolutely vicious strike action” during testy 2019 contract talks with American Airlines.

“I know (MTA Chair and CEO) Janno (Lieber) doesn’t appreciate his tactics, but look – to get people to go and protest in front of someone’s home means that they will follow you anywhere,” Daglian said, referring to coordinated protests of not just Lieber, but politicians as well. Hochul has also been greeted by an entourage of TWU protesters at transit-related events. “I don’t think he does anything on a whim when it comes to representing his members or taking care of the membership at large,” Daglian said.

Samuelsen has remained popular among members as he’s racked up a number of wins over the years. Transit workers in New York City enjoy generous contracts that he helped negotiate. Membership has grown under Samuelsen’s stewardship as well, from roughly 115,000 people about a decade ago to the 165,000 members now. Some of the newest workers to join the ranks are New York City Ferry workers.

That loyalty extends even outside of Samuelsen’s home base of TWU Local 100. He was welcomed with open arms for a photo shoot at the American Airlines terminal at LaGuardia Airport in August, where union workers gladly ferried him across the tarmac and provided him with access to a hangar.

“If he was a weak president, you wouldn’t want to be seen with him,” said Victor Gonzalez, the TWU Local 501 president representing airline workers at several East Coast airports and San Juan. 

Horses and snakes

Samuelsen’s evolution into the union leader he is today has included picking plenty of fights with politicians and bosses, and engaging in aggressive campaigns against them. But he insists they aren’t personal. “I fully embrace the concept that I criticize behavior,” Samuelsen insisted. “I don’t criticize people. I don’t dislike people. I dislike behavior.” Hochul, however, seems to be an exception. Not five minutes into a 2 1/2-hour sitdown interview, Samuelsen made the unusual accusation that the proud Irish American governor was actually Welsh.

“Loads of Welsh built the Erie Canal alongside the Irish, and I think she’s mixed up,” Samuelsen said. “Plus, we don’t want to have to claim her.” (Per Hochul’s office, her family arrived in America from Ireland well after the Erie Canal was completed.) Samuelsen also leans heavily on his Irish heritage, with family hailing from Derry (and yes, he has watched “Derry Girls”). He was even recently named next year’s grand marshal for the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Samuelsen has attacked Hochul’s Irish-ness before. Twice now, the TWU has run St. Patrick’s Day ads calling the governor a snake akin to those of legend driven out by St. Patrick. “Now we wish St. Patrick would come back and rid New York of Governor Kathy Hochul,” Samuelsen said in the ad that first ran amid a contract dispute in 2024 involving Metro-North Railroad workers, and ran a similar ad this year ahead of still-ongoing negotiations for a new contract for transit workers.

Samuelsen’s attacks can often feel awfully personal – even if they’re not personally motivated. Former New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg still remembers how he went after both her and former MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny in 2021 “in such personal terms” when they suspended several subway track inspectors for allegedly failing to perform their duties and then lying about it. Samuelsen tacitly accused both of racism, saying at the time “two privileged white women have just turned the lives of seven people of color totally upside down.”

More recently, Samuelsen has waged war against Menin and City Council Member Christopher Marte, who is championing legislation to ban horse carriages, the drivers and owners of which are represented by the TWU. The speaker had remained largely neutral on the long and contentious fight until recently, and, per a source close to Menin, had a positive working relationship with Samuelsen; TWU even backed her for speaker last year. The same source said Menin gave Samuelsen a heads up that she would schedule a hearing on the bill before she had decided to support it.

That’s when their relationship turned – Samuelsen and the TWU have since attacked Menin publicly, saying in one ad, “Thanks for the betrayal, Julie!”

Yet Samuelsen calls out politicians who go against his workers, no matter the consequences. “Every politician, every CEO who intentionally inflicts harm on a member of the Transport Workers Union should check for skeletons in their closets before taking that step,” he added as a warning in a subsequent text, “and they should expect to be the subject of a prolonged multifaceted strategic fightback campaign.”

But Samuelsen’s attacks on Menin and Feinberg seem benign compared to the public campaign he is waging now against Hochul. Recent offensive strikes have included writing a letter requesting the New York State AFL-CIO not endorse the governor for reelection while laying out recent labor debacles and starting a super PAC to oppose her in November.

He said the intense beef transcends a single contract dispute or disagreement. As Samuelsen tells it, he used to get along with Hochul when she was lieutenant governor. Then came alleged betrayals in two successive contract negotiations since she became governor (including the Metro-North negotiation that resulted in the “snake” attack in 2024).

The last straw for Samuelsen – “where I just gave up on trying to have any kind of relationship with her” – came at the end of last year when Hochul vetoed legislation to require two-person train crews on the New York City subways. According to Samuelsen, Hochul not only rejected the bill despite its broad support in the Legislature, she wrote a veto message arguing the bill would have caused reductions in service and hindered the MTA’s “ability to benefit from capital investments.” Samuelsen took that as an “absolute attack” on transit workers. “And then I just went” – Samuelsen said, finishing the thought with an aggressive middle finger – “that’s where we’re at. She’s untrustworthy.”

“This governor is focused on results, not petty personal politics,” Sean Butler, a spokesperson for Hochul, said in a statement to City & State. “Governor Hochul has delivered for New York’s transit riders and the workers who move them like no governor has before. She rescued the MTA from its fiscal cliff, committed billions in additional funding, strengthened transit worker protections and oversaw a historic reduction in subway crime.”

Letting loose

Nearly everyone who spoke about Samuelsen for this story agreed he has a sharp strategic mind and can equally be a formidable opponent or fierce ally. But the end goal of the vitriolic and uphill fights he is waging currently – including against Hochul – have left many scratching their heads, even those with confidence in Samuelsen’s ability to think five moves ahead.

The letter he wrote to New York State AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento urging the umbrella labor organization not to endorse Hochul for reelection didn’t prevent the powerful group’s members from voting to endorse the governor within a day of the letter. Nor did Hochul lose any of her many, many high-profile union endorsements. But even as Samuelsen may agree that, generally, Democrats are better for working people than Republicans, that doesn’t mean he will rubber-stamp every Democrat just because their opponent might end up winning.

“Anytime anybody talks about endorsing a pro-trade union Republican – ‘Well, we can’t do that because, the lesser of two evils institutionally are the Democrats’ – well, it’s the most stupidest freakin’ notion ever, and I just won’t entertain it anymore,” Samuelsen said. He stepped in to prevent some of his locals from backing Republican Lee Zeldin against Hochul four years ago, he said, but isn’t stopping anyone from endorsing her current opponent Bruce Blakeman.

Samuelsen hasn’t taken much heat from other union leaders for his actions, either. “He is strategic and will stop at nothing to protect and enhance the lives and well-being of his members,” Cilento said of Samuelsen in a statement to City & State. “I have the utmost respect and appreciation for his dedication and commitment to the cause of organized labor.”

Still, Samuelsen’s continued attacks on Hochul are unlikely to encourage her to sign the two-person train crew bill this year after the Legislature passed it a second time in June. In fact, Samuelsen fully expects her to veto it again. And whether he admits it or not, the tide seems to have finally turned on the horse carriage fight with a ban appearing increasingly likely – particularly after 18-year-old tourist Romanch Mahajan was fatally thrown off a runaway horse-drawn carriage in June. So it raises the question: What is his endgame?

It’s not the first time Samuelsen’s strategizing has left people puzzled. His staunch opposition to congestion pricing despite the monetary benefit to the transit system his workers serve seemed like a contradiction. But before he quit the advisory council tasked with making the rules for the program out of protest, Samuelsen’s loud advocacy for New Yorkers underserved by the subway had an impact.

“We have congestion pricing,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at the Riders Alliance. “It’s successful, and part of that success stems from John standing firm on the need for expanded bus service.” Though Pearlstein and other advocates might not have agreed with the tactics, he acknowledged the program is now better thanks to advocacy from Samuelsen.

In other words: Just when it looked like Samuelsen had lost the plot, he turned out to be right.

Old school vs. new school

Even after becoming TWU’s international president, Samuelsen has remained heavily involved in the machinations of Local 100. That includes having a hand in contract negotiations. “John was literally and figuratively sort of looming in the background,” former New York City Transit President Richard Davey told City & State of negotiations in 2023. “That may have been their strategy, but I’m not sure (then-Local 100 President) Richie (Davis) and the negotiating team were fully empowered to come to the deal because John was so in the shadows.” And while less involved in this year’s MTA contract negotiations, per a source familiar with the talks, Samuelsen’s level of involvement in a local dispute, the source said, is “unusual” for most international presidents.

Describing Samuelsen, the same source said, “I think Samuelsen has this romanticized view of a union leader as agitator and fighting modernism, and it’s very old-fashioned and outdated in many ways.” And it’s not necessarily wrong. With his singular focus on economic populism and the livelihood of workers, Samuelsen is part of an increasingly uncommon breed of white, working-class labor leaders in the mold of his idol Mike Quill, even as he describes himself as “the opposite of an idealogue.”

Samuelsen agreed he’s an old-school agitator, but rather than see it as a sign of antiquity, he lamented the idea that he’s outside the norm. “I am combative, but I’m telling you that if every other union leader was getting into these explosive confrontations that are justified the way the TWU has, I wouldn’t appear to be larger than life,” Samuelsen said. “And it’s a shame that I appear to be larger than life, because the only reason that’s happening is because the labor movement has become lackluster.”

Feinberg suggested this style is all Samuelsen knows. That may be true. But Samuelsen sees no reason to change if he’s still fighting the good fight and delivering for his members. “This world is not for everybody, and the TWU is a different union,” he said. “If you don’t want to … pick smart fights and defend workers, then just go back to your tools or retire.”

Now 58, Samuelsen, too, will retire one day, when he becomes “too exhausted or burnt out.” But based on the verve with which he reacted to learning his LaGuardia tarmac shuttle driver wasn’t in a union, that day isn’t anytime soon. He requested someone find out how many drivers there were. “(Even) if there are 10, we’ll organize them,” Samuelsen asserted without question. After all, he’s always on.