About the 1945-46 strike, Walter Reuther, UAW vice president and the union’s top official assigned to GM, was resolute. 

“There is no turning back now that we have been forced to turn down this strike road,” Reuther said, according to Detroit Free Press reporting at the time. “We will not call off this strike until we get our wage demands.”  

In the final contract with GM, UAW workers agreed to a raise of 18.5 cents an hour, paid vacations and overtime.

To place the 1945-46 strike in perspective, the longest strike between the UAW and at least one of the Detroit Three – General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler Corp.) – lasted 136 days involving union members in the Flint area from 1969 to 1970 at the Fisher Body II plant. 

The recent UAW strike against the Detroit Three this year lasted about 40 days. Each of the three automakers have now ratified contract agreements. 

Two weeks after the strike ended, Reuther won the UAW presidency by 125 votes out of fewer than 10,000 votes cast on March 27, 1946, at the union’s tenth convention in Atlantic City, N.J. Reuther defeated Roland Jaye (better known as R.J.) Thomas, the incumbent. 

Reuther served in the role until 1970 when he, his wife, May, and several others died in the plane crash near Pellston. He was 62. 

Then-U.S. President Richard Nixon called Reuther’s death “a deep loss not only for organized labor but also for the cause of collective bargaining and the entire American process,” according to New York Times reporting at the time.