1945–1946 General Motors Strike

The 1945–1946 General Motors Strike was a major dispute in the widening postwar labor crisis: 175,000 employees walked out at plants in 19 states, and the strike lasted more than three months. Its course unfolded amid disputes across major industries, exposing the difficulty of balancing collective bargaining, pressure to curb strikes, and the disruption of the national economy.

Background and Scale

The strike took place as picket lines became a familiar feature of the postwar landscape and labor unrest spread. Truman called for reasonable wage increases through collective bargaining, but faced pressure from both Democrats and Republicans to take a tougher line toward unions. The General Motors stoppage was one of the largest expressions of that mounting conflict, affecting workers across 19 states.

Truman’s Response

Rather than endorse either side outright, Truman asked Congress to prohibit strikes in major national industries for thirty days while a fact-finding board assessed the situation. The proposal reflected his effort to pause industrial conflict and seek information before acting, but it satisfied neither labor nor management, and Congress was not persuaded either. The stoppage continued as his proposed intervention failed to produce agreement.

Place in the Wider Labor Crisis

The General Motors strike was part of a broader wave of industrial disruption, not an isolated dispute. As the conflict dragged on, John L. Lewis called miners out of the coal mines, bringing further pressure on industries dependent on coal. Steel plants banked their furnaces, Ford and Chrysler closed, freight loadings fell by 75 percent, and Chicago ordered electricity use cut in half. These consequences belonged to the wider strike crisis, whose overlapping disputes made the GM stoppage one element in a national economic siege. The account records the strike’s scale and duration, but does not describe its settlement.