The Mohawk Valley Formula

(crossposted from G.D. - hope it's O.K.)

Last edited Tue Aug 7, 2012, 03:40 PM USA/ET - Edit history (3)

"The Mohawk Valley formula is a plan for strikebreaking purportedly written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr. around the time of the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York.

The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming 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."

"Elements of the formula - The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press:

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


As usual, I get the feeling this has been much discussed on D.U.. However, I saw no mention of it during Wisconsin workers battle with Scott Walker. It seems to me that the term "Right to Work" is lifted DIRECTLY from professional union busting propoganda...

"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." (Caps mine.)

What frightens me is that this seems to be the GOP's plan for America as a whole - to return us to the guilded age where there are the very rich and the very poor and little in between. This is the model plan for getting workers to ACT AGAINST THEIR OWN INTEREST. (I wondered how the hell they did it too, all those years...) this is their blueprint.

Education is the best way to overcome propoganda...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula