Mohawk Valley formula

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The Mohawk Valley formula was a plan for strikebreaking published in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Labor Relations Bulletin following or during the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York[1][2][3], although it is not listed in NAM phamplets from that era.[4] The Mohawk Valley formula was purported written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr..[1] The document describes a plan through discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, form puppet associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed to end strikes.

Noam Chomsky, a prominent late-20th century US social critic, emphasized that this was part of "'scientific' methods of strikebreaking' being invented at that time which emphasized how strikes were against harmony and "Americanism".[5] Chomsky devoted a chapter of an later book to talking about the Mohawk Valley formula.[6]

[edit] Elements of the formula

The following hostile characterization of the Mohawk Valley formula appears on an IAMAW website:

  1. When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".
  2. Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.
  3. Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.
  4. Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.
  5. Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.
  6. When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.
  7. Stage the "opening" theatrically by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.
  8. Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.
  9. Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work. With this, the campaign is over—-the employer has broken the strike.[2]

A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in The Nation in 1937.[1]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c Stolberg, Benjamin (Aug 1937). "Vigilantism, 1937". The Nation 145 (7): pp. 166-168. http://newdeal.feri.org/nation/na37145p166.htm. 
  2. ^ a b Rodden, Robert G. (1984). The Fighting Machinists: A Century of Struggle. http://www.iamawlodge1426.org/hisupdate39.htm. Retrieved 2009-07-10. 
  3. ^ Gaboury, Fred (April 1997). "May Day martyrs live on in today’s struggles: The Mohawk Valley Formula and Wheeling-Pitt’s Ron LaBow". People’s Weekly World. http://www.pww.org/archives97/97-04-26-3.html. Retrieved 2009-07-10. 
  4. ^ "National Association of Manufacturers. Pamphlets, 1908-1969". http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ead/htmldocs/KCL05340.html. Retrieved 2009-07-10. 
  5. ^ Chomsky, Noam (Nov 2002). Chomsky on Democracy and Education (Social Theory, Education, and Cultural Change). RoutledgeFalmer. ISBN 978-0415926324. http://books.google.com/books?id=Y5Ouy4XoXPsC&pg=PA229&lpg=PA229&dq=Mohawk+Valley+formula&source=bl&ots=60djfuBtrz&sig=rCNpCoAoJ5cNWhUEDmAofRiOjCA&hl=en&ei=koRXSvSRIc6EtweM26HdCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6. Retrieved 2009-07-10. 
  6. ^ Barsamian, David; Chomsky, Noam (May 2001). Propaganda and the Public Mind. South End Press. ISBN 978-0896086340. 

[edit] See also

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