January 2 A Nation Fed Up Strikes Back

On this day in labor history, the year was 1946.

That was the day Americans awoke to national headlines that the strike wave already underway since the previous fall, would most likely continue and intensify well into the New Year.

Close to half a million workers across several industries had been on strike for months.

The immediate post-war labor unrest came as a result of the slashing of wages, hours and jobs, all while productivity rose as industry engaged in peacetime reconversion.

Newspapers anxiously stressed that President Truman and the Department of Labor were working overtime to get hundreds of thousands of UAW members demanding a 30% wage increase, back to work.

The press feared another 1.5 million would be idle before the month was out.

UAW officials, whose members had been on strike for 43 days, stated theirs was a “strike war” against breadlines soon to come if wartime wages and standards of living were not maintained.

Headlines counseled the public on looming strikes from steel, packing, phone, and appliance workers.

The Packinghouse Union announced 200,000 workers across 147 plants would walk out within two weeks, while Steel Workers announced 700,000 were also ready to strike.

The UE prepared 200,000 of its members to strike at GE, Westinghouse and GM’s electric division, while phone workers and related industries planned a walkout of 250,000.

President Truman responded with talk of fact-finding boards that would impose 30-day strike bans while investigating “strike-breeding” industrial disputes.

He also invoked the threat of widespread seizures if necessary and did so in a number of industries including coal, packing and the railroads.

1946 saw the largest wave of striking workers taking to the picket lines in US history fighting for better wages, hours and conditions.