After a four-week boycott led by Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., bus companies in New York City agree to hire 200 black drivers and mechanics - 1941

Ford Motor Company fires UAW union organizers, sparking a 10 day sit down that finally led Ford to start contract talks. - 1941

Wisconsin state troopers fail to get scabs across the picket line to break a 76-day Allis-Chalmers strike in Milwaukee led by UAW Local 248. The plant remained closed until the government negotiated a compromise - 1941

The Grand Coulee Dam on Washington state’s Columbia River begins operation after a decade of construction. 8,000 workers labored on the project; 77 died - 1941

New York City bus drivers, members of the Transport Workers Union, go on strike. After 12 days of no buses – and a large show of force by Irish-American strikers at the St. Patrick’s Day parade – Mayor Fiorello La Guardia orders arbitration - 1941

Bethlehem Steel workers strike for union recognition, Bethlehem, Penn. - 1941

U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Wages and Hours (later Fair Labor Standards) Act banning child labor and establishing the 40-hour work week - 1941

57 crewmen on three freighters die over a three-day period when their ships sink during a huge storm over Lake Michigan - 1940

The 40-hour work week went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act, signed by Pres. Roosevelt two years earlier - 1940

The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened as the first toll superhighway in the United States. It was built in most part by workers hired through the state’s Re-Employment offices - 1940

Forty-nine people are killed, 200 injured in explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, New Jersey - 1940

An amendment to the 1939 Hatch Act, a federal law whose main provision prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity, is amended to also cover state and local employees whose salaries include any federal funds - 1940