When workers have leverage, as they did in the U.S. during World War I, their prospects for extracting concessions from employers are enhanced. Robert Ovetz describes the wave of labor unrest that marked that period, as well as the Wilson administration’s efforts to pacify workers in order to keep the war economy going. He asserts that government intervention was a sort of trial run for the labor-planning mechanisms put in place during the New Deal.
Robert Ovetz, When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflict from 1877 to 1921 Brill, 2018