What 1946’s General Strike Wave Can Teach Today’s Immigration Activists

Tens of thousands of Minnesotans walked off their jobs to protest federal immigration raids, reviving America’s most powerful and most forgotten labor tactic. The strike that followed, which organizers call the largest general strike coordinated in the United States since 1946, raises a question: What can today’s immigration activists learn from the last time American workers tried this on a massive scale?

The 1946 strike wave—when nearly five million workers walked out in coordinated actions—achieved real victories but also triggered laws that made it much harder for unions to organize and strike.

General strikes can force immediate concessions, but turning that power into lasting change requires more than shutting down the economy for a day.

How Minnesota’s Crisis Became a National Movement

The February 2026 nationwide strike grew from sustained resistance to the massive immigration raid operation (which the government called Operation Metro Surge), which sent roughly 3,000 federal agents to the Twin Cities—the largest domestic immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.

Two fatal shootings changed everything. On January 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, while she sat in her parked vehicle. Video footage showed something different from what authorities claimed. Seventeen days later, agents killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital. Bystander video showed something different from what officials said—Pretti was documenting the operation on his phone, not approaching officers with hostile intent.

By late January, federal agents had arrested an estimated 3,000 Twin Cities residents. Local officials described the atmosphere as an occupation.

The January 23 action proved that mass mobilization was possible. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people marched through downtown Minneapolis in subzero temperatures, with wind chills hitting negative 20 degrees. About 100 clergy members blocked roads at the airport, kneeling in prayer to stop deportation flights. Nearly 20,000 packed into the Target Center arena. Hundreds of businesses closed voluntarily.

Polling after the January action found that roughly one in four Minnesota voters either participated or had a loved one who did. Of those participants, 38 percent stayed off work—either by choice or because their employer closed.

The February escalation went national. The No Kings Coalition, which had organized previous nationwide mobilizations drawing millions, called for a “no work, no school, no shopping” strike. Schools in Arizona, Colorado, and other states preemptively canceled classes. High school students in Michigan, Georgia, and Nebraska walked out. Businesses across the country posted closure notices or pledged to donate proceeds to immigration legal aid.

The Legal Workaround That Made It Possible

Most of these workers couldn’t legally strike. Government workers’ unions have contracts that forbid strikes. The 1947 Taft-Hartley Act—a law that restricted union power—made it illegal for workers to strike in support of other workers or boycott companies they don’t work for. So how did thousands of union members participate without getting fired or triggering union-busting lawsuits?

They got creative.

The St. Paul Federation of Educators faced explicit contract language prohibiting strikes. Their solution? Teachers wore solidarity stickers while “calling in sick” in numbers large enough to overwhelm the substitute system. When school districts closed due to winter weather, it provided cover for what was partly a coordinated labor action. Union leadership framed it by noting that “in 1946, our predecessors went on the first organized teachers’ strike in U.S. history. They went on strike for toilet paper and books, two pressing needs at the time. Their strike was illegal.”

SEIU Local 26 members used Minnesota’s Earned Sick and Safe Time law, which requires employers to provide paid leave for illness, injury, and caring for children missing school. Union members marched on employers with petitions demanding no discipline for missing work. They secured commitments while maintaining plausible deniability so they could claim it wasn’t officially a strike.

This tactical innovation represents a departure from 1946, when strikes operated before Taft-Hartley’s restrictions. Back then, unions either had contractual authorization to strike or proceeded as unofficial strikes with quiet union approval. The post-1947 legal environment forced 2026 organizers to develop more sophisticated techniques—using sick leave policies, weather-related closures, and safety concerns as legal justification for coordinated absence.

The approach worked because employers couldn’t tell legitimate sick leave from coordinated action. But it also revealed the constraints: not all workers have paid sick leave, not all employers will accept the fiction, and the strategy depends on enough workers participating simultaneously to overwhelm disciplinary systems.

What the 1946 Strike Wave Achieved

In 1946 alone, 4,985 strikes involved 4.6 million workers—roughly 10 percent of the American workforce—resulting in 116 million lost workdays. Steel workers, auto workers, coal miners, railroad workers, electrical workers, meatpackers, and maritime workers all conducted major strikes within weeks of each other.

The strikes emerged from specific economic conditions. During World War II, federal wage controls had prevented pay increases while workers put in overtime and premium hours. When those controls ended in 1945-1946, inflation spiked immediately. Workers faced declining wages as wartime pay ended while prices surged. A government study found that “in most cases, wages as the country shifted back from wartime production were inadequate to maintain living standards permitted by earnings in the year preceding Pearl Harbor.”

The strikes won concrete victories. The United Auto Workers’ strike against General Motors—involving over 320,000 workers for three months—resulted in wage increases and better benefits. The steel workers’ strike, with 750,000 participants, secured an 18 percent wage increase. These weren’t symbolic wins. They were negotiated settlements that put more money in workers’ pockets.

But the broader political impact proved catastrophic for labor. The strike wave generated fierce public backlash. In 1947, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over President Truman’s veto. The Act banned boycotts against companies not directly involved in a dispute, restricted votes on whether all workers must join the union, required waiting periods before strikes in essential industries, required union leaders to sign statements swearing they weren’t communists, and established the legal framework for state-level “right-to-work” laws.

The percentage of workers in unions dropped from about 35 percent of the American workforce in the 1950s to roughly 10 percent by 2026. Multiple factors contributed—deindustrialization, globalization, employer opposition—but Taft-Hartley created the legal framework that gave employers the upper hand and weakened unions’ capacity to organize and strike.

The Oakland Strike: Power Without Strategy

The December 1946 Oakland general strike provides the most instructive parallel to 2026. It started with 400 female department store workers walking out after management fired a union organizer. The initial department store strike began in October 1946 and persisted for two months with minimal public awareness.

Then police tried to remove pickets. The Teamsters and other unions mobilized. On December 2, the local AFL labor council (representing unions across the county) voted to call a general strike beginning the next morning. By December 3, approximately 100,000 workers across the county had walked off their jobs, effectively shutting down Oakland’s economy.

It lasted 54 hours. The city witnessed almost complete economic paralysis—stores closed, transportation halted, the only movement involved strikers and supporters. An elected Strike Committee coordinated services, arranging food distribution through union dining stations, maintaining deliveries to hospitals, and deploying unarmed “War Veteran Guards” to maintain order.

But their goals remained unclear. Was this about the retail workers’ union recognition? Police violence? Broader worker power? By the second day, momentum faded. Union leadership, concerned the strike was exceeding their control and fearful of federal intervention, voted to end it. Sound trucks drove through Oakland announcing the decision.

The retail clerks achieved union recognition—a real victory for previously non-union workers. But the broader ambitions suggested by shutting down an entire city didn’t materialize. Oakland demonstrated labor’s capacity to halt an urban economy but revealed the gap between demonstrating power and converting it into lasting change.

What February 2026 Accomplished

On February 12, the Trump administration announced that Operation Metro Surge would end. Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” said the operation would end with agents leaving over the following week. This came less than two weeks after the February nationwide mobilization and six weeks after the January 23 Minneapolis action.

Federal officials attributed the decision to newly achieved “cooperation” between federal and state law enforcement. Homan noted that sheriffs had agreed to notify ICE when individuals suspected of immigration violations were released from jails. This framing suggested success by making enforcement more efficient rather than giving in to protest pressure.

Governor Tim Walz rejected this characterization, arguing that “the way the State of Minnesota is addressing immigration is exactly the same today as it was three weeks ago or three months ago or three years ago.” He interpreted the operation’s end as resulting from the Trump administration’s loss of political support after the Pretti and Good killings.

Civil rights activists expressed skepticism about the withdrawal’s sustainability. CAIR-MN Executive Director Jaylani Hussein noted that “the timing of this withdrawal is not by accident” but rather reflected legislators’ concerns about the state capitol being surrounded by protesters during the upcoming session.

The economic impact appeared significant though difficult to quantify precisely. The January 23 action saw approximately 700 Minneapolis-area businesses close or operate with minimal staffing. Major employers including Target, U.S. Bank, Mayo Clinic, and 3M issued a joint letter asking federal agents to back off—suggesting these corporations perceived risks to their reputation and business operations from continued federal enforcement.

But the “no shopping” component showed limited effectiveness. An Axios analysis found that while Main Street and independent businesses closed or saw disrupted traffic, major national retailers showed “scant evidence” of sales impact. A retail analyst noted that “if a boycott were effective, the sales figures would reflect that. We would witness a significant drop in growth, possibly even falling into negative figures. This is uncommon and not observed at present.”

This finding parallels broader research on consumer boycotts: most don’t produce sustained sales declines, particularly at large national chains with diverse customer bases.

The Difference Between Then and Now

The 2026 strikes differ from 1946 in their target.

In 1946, strikes operated within a framework where employers had clear economic incentive to negotiate. Continued production stoppage represented financial losses that management could quantify and compare to settlement costs. General Motors could calculate how much the UAW strike was costing per day and decide when settlement became cheaper than continued shutdown.

Immigration enforcement doesn’t work that way. The federal government’s incentive structure differs. The Department of Homeland Security gets its money from Congress, not from sales. ICE continues operations regardless of business disruption because Congress gives it money directly, not through sales or production.

This structural difference suggests both the potential and limitations of general strike tactics when applied to political rather than labor-management disputes. You can demonstrate broad opposition. You can create economic disruption that generates political pressure. You can force officials into defensive postures.

But you can’t directly negotiate a settlement the way steel workers negotiated with U.S. Steel. The decision to end or continue deportation raids remains a matter of presidential power and political will, not economic calculation.

The 2006 Precedent

For immigration-specific mobilization, the May 1, 2006 “Day Without an Immigrant” provides more direct historical precedent than the 1946 labor strikes. Between 4 and 5 million people marched in over 160 cities, with parallel “no work, no school, no shopping” strike components. The action responded to HR 4437, which would have criminalized undocumented immigration and support for undocumented immigrants.

The immediate policy outcome involved the bill’s death in the Senate. But the long-term trajectory saw immigration enforcement expand dramatically. The 2006 action, while historically significant, didn’t achieve major changes to immigration law or transformation of enforcement capacity. Backlash against the mobilization included intensified deportation raids and increased deportations under subsequent administrations.

Even massive immigrant rights mobilizations face significant structural challenges in translating strike action into sustained policy change, particularly when they’re trying to change what the president does, not what Congress passes.

Five Strategic Lessons From History

1. Strategic Strikes Work Better Than Everyone Striking

The most effective 1946 strikes didn’t involve everyone—they involved workers with unusual economic power. The UAW strike against General Motors succeeded because auto production was critical and concentrated. The 1934 San Francisco General Strike began with maritime workers whose control of port operations provided unique leverage.

A coordinated strike in transportation, utilities, food distribution, and healthcare—sectors where immigrant communities rely heavily on services—could disrupt federal enforcement operations (ICE depends on transportation networks to move detainees and agents) while preserving services used by the communities the strike aims to protect.

This approach requires sophisticated coordination and represents higher legal risk than broad-based action. But it could get the most impact for each worker who strikes.

2. Clear Demands Enable Negotiation

The 1997 UPS strike by the Teamsters achieved significant victories in part through clear demands: converting part-time jobs to full-time positions with benefits. It lasted 15 days with strong public support, and the union achieved substantial concessions because management understood exactly what needed to happen for the strike to end.

Immigration enforcement policy remains under executive control, but executive officials respond to political pressure. Clear demands would tell government officials, media, and the public what specific changes would end strike action. This could convert what appears as indefinite opposition into a negotiation framework.

The challenge: negotiation requires the president to be willing to talk, which may not be the case. And it requires accepting that partial concessions might represent victory, which some movement elements may reject.

3. Focusing on Specific Places Builds Lasting Power

The 1980s Sanctuary Movement involved approximately 500 churches and synagogues sheltering Central American refugees by 1985. The movement created a parallel system of protection that the federal government lacked capacity to suppress universally. While the federal government prosecuted some sanctuary workers, it didn’t have enough resources to shut down the entire network.

A geographic strategy involving states or regions where organizers maintain strong capacity could create pockets of real sanctuary through local governments working together, labor refusal, and community resistance. This builds organizational capacity concentratedly rather than spreading effort too thin nationally.

The trade-off: geographic focus risks abandoning activists in other regions and accepts that some areas will experience intensive enforcement rather than ending enforcement universally.

4. Building Workplace Power Lasts Longer Than One-Day Strikes

The 2006 “Day Without Immigrants” mobilized millions but didn’t create lasting workplace organization. In contrast, California immigrant worker organizing campaigns that preceded and followed 2006 achieved more durable results through sustained organizing rather than one-time strikes.

Workers who collectively resist ICE raids, refuse to report undocumented coworkers, and collectively demand safety protections are building infrastructure for sustained power. This approach treats strikes as chances to help workers understand their power rather than endpoints, creating permanent groups that can pressure employers on wages, conditions, and immigration-related issues.

The challenge: this requires long-term commitment and resource investment that may not be available during mobilization moments. And employers can respond through hiring more workers who won’t resist or automation.

5. Recording Everything Stops Officials From Lying

The Minneapolis protests benefited from extensive video documentation that contradicted official police narratives, creating political pressure for accountability. Legal observers have become official roles in modern protests with standard training on how to document what happens.

Organized documentation networks create too many independent videographers for federal authorities to suppress all evidence. This converts the federal government’s advantage in official communications into a disadvantage where contradictory video evidence circulates rapidly.

Documentation serves multiple functions: keeping protesters peaceful, creating legal evidence, stopping officials from being the only ones telling the story, and developing historical record.

The Question History Can’t Answer

The No Kings Coalition announced plans for a March 28, 2026 nationwide mobilization targeting nearly 9 million participants—an escalation in ambition suggesting organizer confidence that momentum can be sustained despite the announced conclusion of Operation Metro Surge.

Whether these innovations prove sufficient to achieve movement objectives remains to be determined. The movement demonstrated remarkable organizational capacity, drew thousands into direct political action despite significant legal and economic risks, and forced federal and local authorities to respond to demands they might otherwise have ignored.

The 1946 strike wave teaches us that general strikes can force immediate concessions—but also that turning that power into lasting change requires more than shutting down the economy for a day. Oakland showed labor’s capacity to halt an urban economy but revealed the gap between demonstrating power and using it strategically. The Taft-Hartley backlash proved that when workers seriously challenge federal power, Congress hits back hard.

The 2026 activists operate under severe legal constraints their 1946 predecessors didn’t face. They’ve innovated around those restrictions through sick day strategies, weather-related cover, and safety concerns. They’ve built broad coalitions spanning labor unions, religious organizations, student groups, and community organizations. They’ve achieved participation rates in specific localities comparable to or exceeding 1946 actions despite operating in a far less unionized workforce.

But they face the same challenge that confronted the Oakland strikers in 1946: demonstrating power is far easier than converting it into sustained policy change. The question history can’t answer is whether movements today can solve that problem in ways their predecessors couldn’t.

For historians of American social movements, the 2026 actions represent a significant moment in labor and immigrant rights history—one that revives tactics many thought were dead and tests whether general strikes can work in 21st-century America.

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