Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class 1946 Oakland General Strike About this episode The 1946 Oakland General Strike was part of a massive wave of strikes that took place in the U. S. in 1945 and 1946. Over two days in Oakland, California, and the surrounding area, thousands of strikers shut the city down.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:06 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:20 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Over the past several years, when there's been some frustration and anger over the state of the world, or maybe the state of where we live, I've seen kind of a tide of people calling for a general strike. And whenever that happens, I find myself wanting to do an episode on a general strike. We have talked about some general strikes before, back in 2019, in two different episodes. We talked about the Winnipeg General Strike and the Lemerick Soviet, and both of those had happened in 1919. But a lot of those calls for general strikes here in the United States in the more recent past, those have happened in
3:03 Tracy V. Wilson? the years since we did those episodes, especially in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests in 2020. We have gotten a ton of requests for an episode on the Icelandic General Strike, known in English as the Women's Day Off, which happened in 1975. And while I would really love to do an episode on that, it is hampered by my inability to read Icelandic, just the language that the vast majority of stuff about that is written in. So that has brought us to, instead, the 1946 Oakland General Strike, which is today's subject.
3:43 Holly Frey? The 1946 Oakland General Strike was part of a massive wave of strikes that took place in the US in 1945 and 1946. For context, much of the federal law around unions at this point went back to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also called the Wagner Act. We talked more about this law and the context for its passage in our most recent Saturday classic on the Flint Sit Down Strike. The Wagner Act gave employees the right to form unions and barred employers from interfering with that right. It also established the National Labor Relations Board, which supervised union elections and investigated allegations of unfair labor practices.
4:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, prior to the passage of this act, unionizing was seen as basically a criminal conspiracy. The Wagner Act was framed as diminishing the causes of labor disputes that were, quote, "burdening or obstructing interstate and foreign commerce." It had been passed as part of the New Deal, which was the collection of policies, programs, and laws implemented during the Roosevelt administration to try to help the United States recover from the Great Depression. The Wagner Act had also followed a huge wave of strikes, another labor unrest in 1933 and 1934. Overall, most business leaders and Republican politicians were not fans of the Wagner Act,
5:12 Tracy V. Wilson? but for more than a decade after it was passed, Democrats held majorities in both Houses of Congress, and the president was also a Democrat. So for the most part, opponents of the Wagner Act were stuck with it.
5:27 Holly Frey? In 1941, as industries in the United States were gearing up for World War II, there was another wave of strikes. The US had not entered the war yet, but a range of industries suddenly became critical to the war effort. Workers in those industries and elsewhere saw this as an opportunity to secure higher wages and better working conditions, and took aggressive collective action to try to get that done.
5:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Then in December of 1941, Japan bombed the US naval station at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the United States entered the war. The federal government saw an obvious need to put an end to the strikes and to keep production going. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration started negotiating with union leaders on how to do that.
6:18 Holly Frey? The two major union organizations Roosevelt was working with were the American Federation of Labor, or AFL, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. There was some animosity between the AFL and the CIO. The AFL worked with craft unions, which were considered to represent skilled labor, while the CIO was focused on industrial workers who were seen as unskilled. The CIO had started off as a committee of the AFL before splitting off into its own organization. In late December of 1941, AFL and CIO leadership agreed to a voluntary no-strike pledge for the duration of the war.
7:01 Tracy V. Wilson? But striking, or at least the threat of striking, was really the most powerful tool that unions had to try to improve their pay and working conditions. After union leaders agreed to this no-strike pledge, union workers started wondering how or even whether their unions would be able to fight for them. Support for the AFL and the CIO started to wane among union workers, and then that led to concerns about whether the AFL and the CIO would be able to enforce that no-strike pledge. Like, were people just gonna go striking anyway without their approval?
7:38 Holly Frey? So, the government took additional steps to try to reduce labor disputes, including establishing a national war labor board. Among other things, this board established a policy for union security, which meant that newly hired workers could automatically become union members after 15 days of work, and their dues would automatically be deducted from their pay. Many workplaces were essentially closed shops, in which union membership was required in order to work there. And as a result, union membership soared.
8:13 Tracy V. Wilson? These steps did not put a complete stop to striking or to labor unrest. In June of 1943, Congress passed the Smith Connolly Act, and that act allowed the president to take control of privately owned businesses that were seen as critical to the war effort if there was a strike or other labor unrest going on. This was passed over Roosevelt's veto on June 25, 1943.
8:40 Holly Frey? Meanwhile, the US was also trying to keep inflation from spiraling out of control as it previously had during World War I. An Office of Price Administration was established in 1941 to control the prices on a variety of goods. Food rationing was implemented, both to make sure food was available for the war effort and to help offset the fact that food prices couldn't be used to influence consumer demand.
9:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Then in 1945, the war ended. The Office of Price Administration, the National War Labor Board, and the Smith Connolly Act were all supposed to be temporary wartime measures, and they were all dismantled and dissolved. Businesses also saw an opportunity to start rolling back wartime labor protections, including the National War Labor Board's union security policies, and maybe even to roll back some of those protections from the Wagner Act.
9:40 Holly Frey? At the same time, with an end to price controls, prices surged. In 1946, inflation surged to 18%. Prices doubled for bread and meat. And when Roosevelt reestablished price controls, increased demand for these products led to shortages. As soldiers returned from the war and wartime industries shut down, unemployment increased, and there was also a huge housing shortage.
10:08 Tracy V. Wilson? There was also a lot of pent up demand for goods and services. People had lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s, and then they had continued to make sacrifices during the Second World War. So people had gone from not being able to afford things to not being able to get them because of wartime rationing and shortages. This all became part of that cycle of inflation and scarcity as well.
10:35 Holly Frey? And in light of all of this, people were frustrated. Everyone had lived through years of sacrifice and this "we're all in this together" ideology. And people had lost friends and their loved ones to the war. Young people felt like they had spent years of their lives serving in a war when they should have been in school, or starting a family, or establishing themselves in a trade. And now that they were home again, wages were stagnant, prices were skyrocketing, and goods were hard to find. Women who had been able to get good-paying, union jobs in wartime industries were forced out of those jobs when men returned from service, mainly into industries that were lower-paying and not unionized, like retail and domestic work.
11:20 Tracy V. Wilson? So with all of this going on, and with those wartime no-strike pledges starting to expire, workers once again started going on strike. President Harry S. Truman had come into office when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April of 1945, and that November, he convened a labor management conference with the hope of heading off a crisis. This conference did not really reach any kind of resolution.
11:49 Holly Frey? As unions started negotiating new contracts, many were focused on better pay and working conditions, but some unions tried to take things a step further and influence society as a whole. For example, when United Auto Workers started negotiating with GM in 1945, they didn't want the cost for employee raises to be passed on to consumers through higher prices, because that would just continue to fuel inflation. The union wanted a 30% wage increase to make up for the years workers had gone without raises and the rapidly rising cost of living, and thought that GM could afford this increase without increasing the price of its vehicles.
12:31 Holly Frey? GM's perspective was that, no, it could not afford that kind of wage increase without also having a price increase, but even if it could, the price of the product was up to the business and not the union. These talks broke down and a strike started on November 21st, 1945, which lasted for 113 days.
12:54 Tracy V. Wilson? This was not at all the only strike and this wave of strikes continued into 1946. That year, roughly a quarter of union workers in the United States went on strike at some point. That included 200,000 electrical workers, 260,000 meat packers, 400,000 coal miners, and 750,000 steel workers. In some cases, the federal government stepped in to seize control of industries that were seen as critical. This happened in the case of striking railroad workers who were threatened with military conscription and with the meatpacking plants.
13:36 Holly Frey? In addition to strikes across specific industries, there were multiple general strikes in 1945 and 1946. These often started with a specific union going on strike and then other unions and non-union workers joined them in solidarity. For example, in Stamford, Connecticut, the International Association of Machinists was negotiating a contract with Yale and Town Company. They could not reach an agreement and a strike was called on November 7th, 1945. When local police refused to intervene, the governor sent in the state police and people were outraged. Stamford had a population of 65,000 people
14:19 Holly Frey? and an estimated 20,000 participated in a one-day general strike that shut the city down. Eventually, federal negotiators stepped in and the IAM and Yale and Town Company reached an agreement in April of 1946.
14:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Another general strike was in Rochester, New York in May of 1946. City manager Louis V. Cartwright fired almost 500 municipal workers who were trying to unionize and then fired more than 60 truck drivers who walked off the job to protest those firings. There was a mass demonstration in support of the fired workers who were rehired, but the city manager refused to recognize the unions still. This led to a general strike on May 28th that involved all 35,000 members of AFL and CIO unions in the city.
15:15 Tracy V. Wilson? There were general strikes in Hartford, Connecticut, Camden, New Jersey, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania as well, and in Oakland, California, which we will get into after a sponsor break.
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18:42 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1946, retail workers in Oakland, California were trying to unionize. Retail unions in the area included the Department and Specialty Store Employees Union Local 1265 and the Retail Clerks International Protective Association. The Department and Specialty Store Employees Union had already organized the SH Crest Store in Oakland, as well as some of the city's shoe stores.
19:11 Holly Frey? Workers were also trying to organize at Conn's Department Store and at Hastings Clothing Company, which were both in Latham Square, across the street from one another. Workers at Conn's and Hastings had learned that workers at the unionized stores were making about $10 a week more than they were. Retail workers also wanted to move away from a ready room system of getting shifts. Workers who didn't have an assigned shift for the day were expected to wait in a room in the store's basement, arriving in the morning, and then waiting to see if they were needed. They often waited until lunchtime or later before being either called up to work or sent home, and they were not paid for their time while they waited in the ready room.
19:55 Tracy V. Wilson? About three quarters of the 850 employees at Conn's had voted to unionize. Hastings was a smaller store than Conn's, but almost all of its 100 employees were on board. Most of the workers who were trying to organize were white women, and a lot of them were middle aged or older. Many of them had worked at the stores for years. Many had also had high paying union jobs in Oakland's shipyards during the war, and so they already had experience in being in a union, and they wanted a union at their retail job.
20:30 Holly Frey? But the stores refused to negotiate. The Retail Merchants Association, or RMA, united all the big department stores in Oakland and Berkeley. It was deeply anti-union. Cress and the unionized shoe stores had both been forced to leave the RMA after recognizing their employees' unions. Management at Conn's and Hastings did not want the same thing to happen to them. Management said they would only recognize the union if all 28 stores that were part of the RMA agreed to unionize.
21:04 Tracy V. Wilson? That was just not feasible. Workers at Hastings went on strike on October 23, 1946. About a week later, on October 31, workers at Conn's went on strike as well. Although the leadership of the Teamsters Union seems to have been kind of ambivalent about the retail workers' strike, Teamsters refused to cross the picket lines to deliver goods to the stores. Other unions in Oakland also encouraged their members not to cross the picket lines to go shopping.
21:37 Holly Frey? At this point, Oakland City Council, the police, and the Oakland Tribune were all tightly connected. Joseph Noland, who had previously served in the California State Senate and in the US House of Representatives, owned the newspaper, and a lot of other powerful people in California had personal or political connections to him. Noland had also supported Earl Warren in his bid to become governor of California, so he had a very wide network of very powerful political connections that stretched well beyond Oakland. In other words, while the retail workers had a lot of support from unionized workers in the city, the city itself and its Republican political machine were both entrenched and both very anti-union.
22:24 Tracy V. Wilson? As December and the Christmas shopping season started to approach, workers at both stores were still on strike. Even though a lot of shoppers were refusing to cross the workers' picket lines, the stores had gone without deliveries for weeks, so their stock was getting low. Teamsters were not delivering merchandise, but the striking workers knew that it was possible that strikebreakers would be brought in to deliver things in their place. So the workers were keeping an eye on the stores, and they were also parking their cars in the loading areas so that trucks could not get in if they did arrive. According to the strikers, they had a verbal OK from the police to park their cars at the loading docks
23:08 Tracy V. Wilson? and assurances that their cars would be safe there.
23:12 Holly Frey? On December 1st, the city and the RMA had police forcibly clear roughly 500 picketing workers from around the stores. Some of the nearly 250 police officers who were dispatched to the downtown area were armed with tear gas and gas masks. But they mostly did this by shoving people out of the way with their clubs, battering and bruising some of the strikers in the process. Some of the striking workers and their supporters were injured during all of this, mostly after being struck with officers' clubs. But one man, Newton Salvage, had to be hospitalized after being knocked down by a police officer on a motorcycle.
23:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Police also towed the workers' cars out of the loading areas. And according to some reports, they left those cars in gear while towing them to intentionally damage their transmissions. After clearing people out of the downtown area, police established a cordon and escorted six trucks through it. Each of those trucks made two trips from a warehouse in Berkeley, where the merchandise had been staged for delivery. It was clear to the strikers and their supporters that this had all been planned out and coordinated and that the city government, the police and store management had all been involved.
24:31 Holly Frey? The trucks were from Veterans Trucking Company, which employed combat veterans and had been established by the Merchants and Manufacturers Association to deliver merchandise during strikes. This led to some altercations between the veterans who were breaking the strike and the ones who were on the picket lines.
24:50 Tracy V. Wilson? Newton Selvage, who we mentioned a moment ago, was a streetcar operator. And when the streetcars and buses started arriving on scene just as part of their daily routes, a lot of their operators refused to cross the police cordon. Operators stopped their streetcars and removed the control mechanisms, which rendered them inoperable and immovable, and bus drivers also left their buses and just walked away. Al Brown, president of the Carman's and Drivers Union, was part of this action with the streetcars and described the police cordon as a picket line he refused to cross. If I'm understanding his statement correctly, this sounds like some malicious compliance on his part.
25:35 Tracy V. Wilson? This action by the streetcar drivers and the bus drivers really snarled traffic all over Oakland for hours.
25:43 Holly Frey? Over the course of the day, people in Oakland became really angry about what was happening. It wasn't just that truck drivers had been hired to break the strike. It was that the police, which people had paid for with their taxes, were protecting the strikebreakers, shoving around the strikers, many of whom were women, and keeping people out of the downtown area. In later interviews, Joe Shoday of the International Typographical Union described this use of taxpayer-funded police to, quote, "beat us off our own streets" was, quote, "the first step toward fascism."
26:19 Tracy V. Wilson? The only workers actually on strike on December 1st were the workers at Conn's and Hastings, and then there were Teamsters who were refusing to cross their picket lines in solidarity. On December 2nd, union officials from the AFL and the CIO met to decide what to do. Ultimately, the AFL told its members in Oakland to "take a holiday" the next day to protest the use of police force to try to break the strike. A mass meeting had already been scheduled to take place that night in support of the striking retail workers.
26:54 Holly Frey? The general strike officially started at 5:00 a.m. on Monday, December 3rd. About 100,000 AFL workers across the county didn't show up for work or walked off the job. Between the retail workers and their supporters from other unions, there were more than 5,000 people picketing in front of the stores, with reports of much greater numbers in the surrounding area. Streetcars and buses didn't leave their yards after 5:00 a.m., so there were massive traffic jams all around Oakland. Union typesetters and press operators joined the strike, so this also stopped the presses at the Oakland Tribune. The Sailors Union of the Pacific walked off of three ships that were docked at the Port
27:37 Holly Frey? of Oakland, which were all loaded up and ready to depart.
27:41 Tracy V. Wilson? This general strike basically took over the whole downtown area. Teamsters patrolled to make sure things stayed peaceful, and since the city was decorated for Christmas, this turned into kind of a festival atmosphere. Bars were allowed to stay open if they only served beer but not liquor, and if they moved their jukeboxes onto the sidewalks and let people play them for free. Especially into the afternoon and the evening, this really felt kind of like a party.
28:09 Holly Frey? But while there was immense support for the general strike among union members, there wasn't a lot of coordination or planning from union leaders. For example, a well-planned general strike can keep basic critical services running, both to try to maintain goodwill with local residents who aren't striking and to make sure the strikers have access to the supplies and support they need. In Oakland, virtually all the stores were shut down, except for food stores and pharmacies. Unionized restaurants shut down, and picketers forced the non-union restaurants to shut down as well. The Milk Wagon Drivers Union had objected to the general strike, and they were allowed to continue delivering
28:52 Holly Frey? milk, but before long, with all the restaurants closed, people were starting to get hungry. Strikers also realized that single men living in boarding houses in Oakland had no kitchens and relied on those restaurants for all their food. So as the day wore on, some of the restaurants were allowed to reopen.
29:12 Tracy V. Wilson? That night, about 10,000 AFL union members gathered at Oakland Auditorium for a mass meeting, with at least 5,000 people listening to the address over speakers outside. This was especially a lot considering that it was raining really hard that night. Speakers included James Galliano, who was attorney for the clerks and the labor council, and Harry Lundberg, who was secretary treasurer of the Sailors Union of the Pacific. This meeting was more like a rally than a planning meeting, with Lundberg giving the most radical speech, which described the police department's actions as fascism in America.
29:52 Holly Frey? As the general strike stretched into December 4, concerns were growing among the leadership of the AFL. Most of the unions that were participating were AFL unions, but there wasn't really anyone in charge on-site at the strike, or a clear set of demands. Demonstrators had started calling for the mayor and the entire city council to resign, which went well beyond the demands of a simple labor negotiation. International Teamster president Dave Beck also called the general strike, quote, "a lot of foolishness", and described it as more like a revolution than an industry dispute.
30:29 Tracy V. Wilson? There were some discussions of starting another general strike across the bay in San Francisco. The CIO also started discussing whether its unions should join the general strike. Since the CIO's unions included workers at pretty much all of the city's basic utilities, this could have given the strikers an incredible amount of bargaining power. Most of the city's unionized black workers were also in CIO unions, so CIO involvement would have brought more of these workers into the strike as well.
31:03 Holly Frey? But on December 5th, the AFL Central Labor Council of Oakland called for an end to the general strike after a vote by business agents. Those are typically the people who act as liaisons between the union and the management. Beck also ordered the Teamsters to resume their deliveries to the stores. City manager J.F. Hassler had given verbal assurances that the Oakland police would no longer protect non-striking trucks that were trying to deliver to the stores. The Labor Council decided that the use of police to protect the trucks was what had prompted the general strike, and now that that was resolved, there was no reason to continue. Also, at this point, the mayor had been given emergency powers, although those had not
31:47 Holly Frey? been put into use, and there were rumors that federal troops were going to be deployed.
31:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, so there were concerns that things in Oakland were going to get a lot worse than the kind of peaceful party atmosphere that they had had. The general strike ended on December 5th, 1946, at 11:00 a.m., having lasted for 54 hours. A lot of the actual strikers were furious at the decision to call it off, and many of the striking retail workers felt betrayed and angry. None of those workers' actual issues had been addressed, and store management was still refusing to negotiate with them or to recognize their union. In spite of the order for Teamsters to return to work at the stores, a lot of them continued to refuse to cross the picket line.
32:37 Tracy V. Wilson? These picket lines also got a lot smaller after the RMA got an injunction to allow only five pickets at each store entrance. The city managers also did not keep their promise not to use police to protect deliveries to the store.
32:53 Holly Frey? After the general strike, the AFL, CIO, and NAACP united to form the Oakland Voters League. The league tried to build connections between organized labor in the city, which was predominantly white, and the city's black voters and civil rights activists. The league also backed candidates for the five city council seats that were up for election in 1947. Four of those candidates won. The fifth, Glenn Goldfarb, lost very narrowly. There is some speculation that this may have been due to the design of the ballot, which made his opponent look like part of the labor ticket, or it could have been because of antisemitism. This council had nine members, so the ticket didn't have a majority,
33:38 Holly Frey? so this wound up being more of a symbolic win than an ushering in of change in the city. The Oakland Voters League was also short-lived. It dissolved after not seeing similar successes in 1949.
33:52 Tracy V. Wilson? The retail workers' strike ended the day before the city election, and a week later, the Retail Merchants Association recognized Local 1265 as the union for all of its stores. It took years for the workers at Conn's and Hastings to actually get a collective bargaining agreement in place, though.
34:12 Holly Frey? This general strike, along with the other strikes in 1945 and 1946, led to changes in federal law, and we'll get into all of that after a sponsor break.
34:28 Speaker 01 That sound? That's pro squash. Some of the fastest rallies in sport played inches from the crowd. The National Squash League is back in full swing for season four. The sport is heading to the 2028 Olympics for the first time, and you can see it up close right now in a city near you. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.
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35:56 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
36:38 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
37:04 Tracy V. Wilson? The 1946 Oakland general strike took place after that year's general election. In the face of rampant inflation and massive labor unrest, Republicans had taken the majority in both houses of Congress, although Democrat Harry Truman had been re-elected as president. This was the first time since 1933 that Democrats had not controlled both houses of Congress. And for almost all of that time, the president had also been Franklin D. Roosevelt.
37:34 Holly Frey? When the new Congress was sworn in in 1947, legislators immediately got to work introducing bills related to labor, specifically bills that would put new limits on the Wagner Act. It wasn't just about the immense wave of strikes that had happened in 1945 and 1946. This was at the start of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and legislators had deep concerns about communism within the nation's organized labor. And communism had been a big part of the labor movement, starting in the early 20th century, with many unions' most effective organizers also being Communist Party members.
38:16 Holly Frey? This wasn't the first time there had been heightened concerns about communism in the US. We've done several previous episodes related to the First Red Scare of the 19-teens, including our two-parter on the Palmer Raids. The 19-teens, like the mid-1940s, had also been a time of widespread labor activism and strikes.
38:36 Tracy V. Wilson? As we said, a lot of the bills that were introduced were related to all of this in some way, but two really came to the forefront. One, introduced in the Senate by Robert A. Taft of Ohio, Chair of the Senate Labor Committee, and the other in the House by Representative Fred A. Hartley Jr. of New Jersey, the Republican Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee. Broadly speaking, Hartley's bill was more restrictive than Taft's was, and the version that ultimately passed both houses of Congress included elements of both of their bills. The resulting law is the Labor Management Relations Act, but it's more commonly known as Taft-Hartley.
39:21 Holly Frey? The AFL Central Labor Council had teamed up with the CIO to create a joint committee to combat anti-labor legislation, and unions demonstrated against this bill. This included a Detroit rally planned by United Auto Workers, which had about 200,000 people in attendance. Workers, union organizers, and their supporters called on Truman to veto this bill. Truman did, calling it “completely contrary to that national policy of economic freedom.” He said that it would encourage “distrust, suspicion, and arbitrary attitudes,” and he also used words like “drastic” and “unworkable” in reference to it.
40:03 Tracy V. Wilson? Overriding the president’s veto requires a 2/3 majority of Congress, and the Republican Party had only a narrow majority in both houses. But the Taft-Hartley Bill had bipartisan support, and Truman was not able to rally enough Democrats to stop Congress from overriding his veto. One thing working against him here was racism. Shortly after the end of World War II, the CIO had launched Operation Dixie to try to unionize industries in the South, including Black and White workers, and Southern Democrats were deeply opposed to this effort.
40:42 Holly Frey? The Taft-Hartley Act became law on June 23, 1947, amending the Wagner Act of 1935. Legislators framed it as restoring the balance between labor and management—or unions and employers—while unions described it as a slave-labor law.
41:01 Tracy V. Wilson? The Wagner Act had outlined a series of unfair labor practices that were outlawed for employers. Taft-Hartley outlined unfair labor practices for unions as well. It outlawed secondary boycotts, meaning that unions cannot take action against neutral third parties in disputes with an employer. So as an example, a retail workers’ union could not plan a boycott of a clothing manufacturer whose goods are being sold at their store. Sympathy strikes were outlawed as well, like the Teamsters striking in support of Oakland's retail workers. This essentially outlawed the type of general
41:44 Tracy V. Wilson? strike that had been carried out in Oakland and several other cities in the United States in 1945 and 1946. And it also outlawed Wildcat strikes, or strikes undertaken by union members without the union leadership's authorization.
42:00 Holly Frey? Some of the other Taft-Hartley provisions included a ban on feather bedding. That's forcing an employer to pay for work that wasn't actually done. So, an example of that would be if a factory moved from a manually operated machine to an automatic one, the union could not force the employer to keep that person's job even though there was no longer work to do. It also outlawed closed shops that required workers to already be a member of a union before being hired, although it allowed union contracts that required workers to join the union after being hired. It also allowed states to pass open shop legislation, or what is known as right-to-work laws, which allow people to work at unionized workplaces
42:45 Holly Frey? without being compelled to become a member of the union. These kinds of laws are currently on the books in 26 US states, as well as Guam. The law also gave the US Attorney General the authority to use injunctions to prevent a strike if it would, quote, "imperil the national health or safety," and required unions to give employees and managers advanced notice of strikes.
43:10 Tracy V. Wilson? There were a lot of other Taft-Hartley provisions as well, and we're not going to try to talk about every single one of them, but a major one that we have not talked about is that Section 9H required union officers to sign non-communist affidavits. If the union leaders did not, their union would not be allowed to have an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, and the NLRB also would not investigate any claims that the union filed about alleged unfair labor practices. This meant that unions had to purge communists from their leadership if they wanted the protections and recognitions that exist under federal law.
43:53 Tracy V. Wilson? This caused a lot of unions, especially industrial unions, to lose some of their most dedicated and experienced leaders who either refused to sign these affidavits or were ousted because of their ties to communism.
44:07 Holly Frey? The Taft-Hartley Act had an obvious effect on things like sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts. The Oakland General Strike was the last major general strike in the United States for decades. There have been some more recent general strikes in the US, including the 2011 Oakland General Strike, the essential workers' general strike in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Strike for Black Lives on July 20, 2020. In some of these, labor unions have expressed support for the strike, but without explicitly instructing their members to participate, which would be illegal under the Taft-Hartley Act. Several unions were involved with the Strike for Black Lives, but this was framed as a
44:50 Holly Frey? one-day walkout rather than an ongoing general strike.
44:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Beyond that, it's impossible to hit every detail of the Taft-Hartley Act and its impact and legacy in like the wrap-up of a single podcast episode. There is an argument that a lot of its provisions legally codified decisions that the NLRB was already making rather than trying to set a whole new precedent. Its weakening of union rights and protections was a factor in the AFL and CIO ultimately merging into one organization in 1955. This made the AFL-CIO one enormous umbrella with 16 million members, which could at least theoretically have a lot of power.
45:35 Tracy V. Wilson? But at the same time, Taft-Hartley provisions meant that smaller unions had a lot less bargaining power, especially with the end of closed shops and the rise of right-to-work states. Taft-Hartley also definitely had a chilling effect on the CIO's efforts to unionize the South. Those efforts were already being hampered by racism and discriminatory laws. There have also been other federal laws that have been passed since 1947 that have modified Taft-Hartley in one way or another.
46:08 Holly Frey? To return to the Oakland strike, Latham Square went through a three-year renovation that was finished in 2016. The Central Plaza area has six placards about the area's history, and one of them is dedicated to the general strike. Do you also have listener mail?
46:26 Tracy V. Wilson? I do have listener mail. First, very quickly, we heard from Colin, who had requested the episode on the Great Epizootic of 1872. And Colin said, no, it was not because of the current avian flu situation that we are all living through. Colin had just encountered the word epizootic somewhere and looked it up and stumbled across this 1872 epizootic. Thought that would be a great show topic. I agree. That is a perfectly acceptable reason to come up with a show suggestion, just randomly stumbling across a word one day.
47:02 Holly Frey? That's how shows get selected half the time.
47:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
47:08 Tracy V. Wilson? I also have an email that I am going to read from Patty. Patty's email is titled Hominy Love. Patty wrote, Tracy and Holly, thank you for this week's episodes on Pilagra. I had heard parts of the story before, but y'all talked about so much more that I did not know. With last month's epizootic episode, I am loving all the medical history info. I grew up eating hominy and thought everyone ate it, too. My mom would also make a dish with spinach and scrambled eggs that was so good. Just canned spinach drained and cooked into scrambled eggs. She said she grew up eating it with poke greens instead of spinach, what she called poke salad. Now I just need a pork chop to go on the side with my hominy
47:51 Tracy V. Wilson? and spinach. Ultimate comfort food. I've been listening to your podcast since the beginning. I love the Halloween and holiday episodes, the unearthed and eponymous foods. Please see the pet tax of my two cats, Rocco and Penny. Rocco, half Maine Coon, half grumpy old man. And Penny, a classic orange. I have seen her lick soap and eat plants that should be toxic to her. She is fine. Wishing you both the best. You're both so amazing, Patty. Thank you so much, Patty. Let's look at these kitty cats.
48:22 Holly Frey? Penny.
48:23 Tracy V. Wilson? Penny. Hello, Penny. Penny is a very, very loungy-looking orange cat with a face that's just sort of like, yes, hello. I'm hanging out here in my lounging space.
48:39 Holly Frey? I'm looking for some soap to eat.
48:42 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, wow, Rocco is so fluffy. Uh, and is stretched out on a hardwood floor. But just, I cannot, I cannot adequately describe how fluffy this cat is. I used to have a cat named Sestina, who I thought was very fluffy. This cat is fluffier than Sestina. Um, I can see where the half mane coon is coming in with the size of this kitty cat.
49:07 Holly Frey? And the fluff.
49:08 Tracy V. Wilson? And the fluff, yeah. So, thank you so much, Patty. I am glad to hear about, um, this, uh, the hominy and just the, this, uh, recipe of, uh, spinach and scrambled eggs. I think that sounds really good. Poke salad, its own, uh, cultural food also.
49:30 Holly Frey? I'm gonna need you to explain that one to me.
49:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Um, which part?
49:34 Holly Frey? I don't know what poke salad is.
49:36 Tracy V. Wilson? So poke weed is a plant. It is a plant that people can forage. There is a specific way that it needs to be prepared in order to be, uh, eaten safely. So don't just go Google a picture of poke weed and go, uh, chomp on some. But it is, it is a staple food in the, a lot of the places that it grows. Um, I've always associated it with like life in the South. I would, there would be poke weed growing all over, uh, the, the area around where my parents lived when I grew up. Um, the berries that it grows look very, they're very recognizably distinctive to me.
50:15 Tracy V. Wilson? And there is a, a whole process of like preparing it and, uh, washing it, um, that, that has to be done to make it safe to eat because of the, the toxic compounds that it just contains as it grows. So, yeah, uh. I like the idea of someone in place of that just using canned spinach. Frozen spinach can also be a great addition to stuff. I have some bagged spinach in my fridge right now that's going to be cooked down tonight because it is no longer crisp and green. We've reached, we've reached the time that the spinach must, must be eaten.
50:59 Tracy V. Wilson? And so it is going to go into something I'm making for dinner tonight. So thank you again, Patty, for these pictures and an email about hominy and, and poke salad and all of that. If you'd like to send us a note about this or any other podcasts, we're at [email protected] . And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
51:46 Speaker 01 That sound? That's the National Squash League. Pro teams, the world's best players, and rallies so fast you'll forget to breathe. Season four is in full swing and every match streams free on YouTube. Big hits, bigger rivalries, and a front row seat from wherever you are. Watch every match for free on YouTube. Search National Squash League and hit subscribe or follow live updates on Instagram at NSL.Sport.
52:14 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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53:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck.
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