The Taft-Hartley Labor Management Relations Act, curbing strikes, is vetoed by President Harry S Truman. The veto was overridden three days later by a Republican-controlled Congress – 1947

The Congress of Industrial Organizations expels the Fur and Leather Workers union and the American Communications Association for what it describes as communist activities - 1947

The House of Representatives approves the Taft-Hartley Act. The legislation allows the President of the United States to intervene in labor disputes. President Truman vetoed the law but was overridden by Congress - 1947

500 workers in Texas City, Texas die in a series of huge oil refinery and chemical plant explosions and fires - 1947

Jackie Robinson, first black ballplayer hired by a major league team, plays his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbetts Field - 1947

National Labor Relations Board attorney tells ILWU members to “lie down like good dogs,” Juneau, Alaska - 1947

Some 300,000 members of the National Federation of Telephone Workers, soon to become CWA, strike AT&T and the Bell System. Within five weeks all but two of the 39 federation unions had won new contracts - 1947

An explosion at a coal mine in Centralia, Ill. kills 111 miners. Mineworkers President John L. Lewis calls a six day work stoppage by the nation’s 400,000 soft coal miners to demand safer working conditions - 1947

General strike begins in Oakland, Calif., started by female department store clerks - 1946

Teachers strike in St. Paul, Minn., the first organized walkout by teachers in the country. The month-long “strike for better schools” involving some 1,100 teachers—and principals—led to a number of reforms in the way schools were administered and operated - 1946

Hollywood’s "Battle of the Mirrors." Picketing members of the Conference of Studio Unions disrupted an outdoor shoot by holding up large reflectors that filled camera lenses with blinding sunlight. Members of the competing IATSE union retaliated by using the reflectors to shoot sunlight back across the street. The battle went on all day, writes Tom Sito in "Drawing the Line" - 1946

General strike begins across U.S. maritime industry, stopping all shipping. The strikers were objecting to the government's post-war National Wage Stabilization Board order that reduced pay increases negotiated by maritime unions - 1946