288 ChaPter^5
pay raises during the war and now wanted to be rewarded. The new president
was never pro-labor to begin, and in the face of right-wing criticism and labor
demands, he mostly sided with the businessmen. In November 1945, 200,000
UAW members went on strike at GM plants; in January 1946, 300,000 meat-
packers and 180,000 electrical workers walked off the job, and then 750,000
steelworkers. In April, 1.3 million coal miners struck, causing a country-wide
energy shortage, and railroad workers went out in May, causing a nearly total
shutdown of U.S. commerce. Workers in transportation, communications,
education, and public utilities went out as well, and by the end of 1946, over
4.6 million workers had struck, with average work stoppages much longer
than the wartime strikes. Truman never gave in, however. During the 1946
miners’ strike he took the UMW to court, threated to conscript the mine-
workers [force them to work, like the draft in the military], and asked for
anti-strike laws. The miners did go back on the job, and received pay raises,
but labor was not happy with the president or the Democrats and they never
warmed up to each other.
Unions had other problems as well. Though it gained almost a million new
members, organized labor was unable to gain much success in southern states,
where conservative, anti-labor politicians were in charge. And, as we shall see
in the next chapter, labor was particularly targeted in the newest “red scare”
as being anti-American and led by Communists. By 1947, America was sol-
idly anti-labor and Congress passed legislation that chopped apart the Wagner
Act, which Truman, hoping for union votes, vetoed but was overridden. Labor
had survived the Great Depression and made some meaningful gains during
the war, but, as always, the corporations held effective power over workers
and, richer than ever with wartime profits, were not going to be cooperative
to the extent they had been during the war. There was no “radical” labor
movement in America, though the actions at Flint and in the Little Steel and
Miners’ strikes alarmed many that there was, and business would grow with a
non-threatening labor movement still in place in the postwar era.From Depression to Power
While labor’s struggles were secondary to the war effort, they were still
important—as was the plight of women, African Americans, and other groups.