1945–1946 U.S. Strike Wave

Nov 10, 2025

November 21 marks the 80th anniversary of the entry of General Motors workers into the enormous post-war strike movement of 1945–1946. This largest strike wave in American history involved more than five million workers in almost 5,000 walkouts in auto, steel, oil, trucking, and beyond.

But this massive outbreak of determination and solidarity did not end the labor movement’s policy of dividing workers by industry and company.

Workers started striking even during World War II. Wildcat strikes sprang up in nearly every industry throughout the war, with workers defying their union heads and the No Strike Pledge they had given to the Roosevelt government. Workers fought for better working conditions.

When World War II ended and war orders stopped, bosses raised prices sharply and cut back on jobs and hours. Rebellion broke out among workers, who had suffered years of frozen wages, forced overtime, and rationing of meat, sugar, and gas.

Seeing this, union heads decided that their best course of action to keep control of the situation was to call strikes themselves and make them official. But the tool those labor leaders used in their fight was not a class-wide organization, but separate unions established to cover specific groups of workers fighting against their particular bosses.

Oil workers struck in August and September 1945. The United Automobile Workers (UAW) chose to fight each of the three leading automakers separately, one at a time. Ford proactively locked out 50,000 workers. The UAW had them bide their time, along with Chrysler workers. UAW’s GM director Walter Reuther had 320,000 workers at 96 plants strike on November 21. Isolated, they held out as weeks went by.

Unions in other industries negotiated with companies for months. In December, 120,000 miners, steel workers, and rail workers around Pittsburgh went on strike. Only in January 1946 did union leaders raise the nationwide floodgates. At Ford and Chrysler, 300,000 workers struck; and 174,000 electrical workers, 93,000 meatpackers, and 750,000 steel workers struck. Suddenly, the power of workers as a class loomed before the capitalists.

The unions did not propose to force a joint settlement by all bosses for all workers. But quickly the packinghouse, steel, electrical, and rubber bosses settled. Ford and Chrysler settled. Again, the GM workers were fighting on their own—until March 13, 1946, when GM finally settled after 113 days.

The vast strike movement gained some wage increases and health coverage and preserved jobs. It shows what workers could gain when mobilized across a range of sectors. But labor leaders never proposed for workers to spread the movement from one sector to another, or to the rest of the working class not organized in unions. In fact, they helped set the pattern of controlled, separate, corporatist strikes that they have followed ever since. Workers were forced into that structure by their union heads.

Only the bosses win when workers remain divided and their fights remain separate. We need a new struggle—one that pushes beyond the artificial barriers that divide the working class.