World War and the Growth of Global Power 287ditions. Union membership thrived under those circumstances; by 1946 about
70 percent of workers in manufacturing, including the major corporations, had
some type of union contract and collective bargaining agreement, and much
of that success was due to labor’s cooperation with corporate leaders and the
government. Likewise, as much as the bosses hated “giving in” to unions, the
need to keep the factories open for wartime production and the profits it
brought were more important than fighting against organized labor.
Anti-labor businessmen and politicians did not go away, however. Even
though labor was cooperative and not “radical” in any sense, anti-union efforts
were common throughout the war. Corporate and conservative political lead-
ers, as noted, made it a priority to ban strikes in defense industries and
wanted military contracts to include a open shop clause. Some even went to
the extreme of blaming labor, because it was fighting for wages and other
rights and apparently not producing enough, for the defeat of France in June
- Texas Senator Price Daniel came close to claiming that American labor,
not the Axis, was the gravest threat to the U.S. “The maintenance of ‘Freedom
to Work’,” he declared, “means more to the domestic affairs of this country
and to the future of the Nation than the temporary decision on any matter
concerned with the present World War.” Public opinion mostly agreed, with
two-thirds of Americans agreeing that strikes in industries that produced
goods for war should be prohibited. In mid-1943, during the miners’ strike,
Congress even passed a bill [Smith-Connally] that would force unions to give
a 60-day notice that they were going on strike, which would have made wild-
cats impossible. FDR did veto that bill, but the senate overrode it immedi-
ately. Later that year, not long after seizing the mines, FDR seized the rail-
roads to prevent a nation-wide strike in that industry. In fact, in the course
of the war the president had the army seize 67 defense industries in order to
prevent labor actions that would have slowed down production. Despite that
record of keeping labor in its place, FDR and the Democrats were still
attacked for being too close to unions. Those circumstances, government
efforts to limit labor’s power and rights, continued after the war ended as well.
After FDR died in April 1945, Harry S Truman became president, and
conservatives attacked him too as being “beholden” to the unions. Labor,
however, was never enthused about Truman’s policies and even though he
lifted the freeze on wages and let workers seek pay increases, the number of
strikes grew significantly. Workers had taken a no-strike pledge and sacrificed