How the Mohawk Valley Popularized a Brutal Method of Strikebreaking
Labor unrest has been a part of history for generations. Some sources even point to the first ever recorded strike taking place in 1170 BCE Egyptover delays in receiving building materials. With the emergence of organized labor, it was a dialectical inevitability that the bourgeois class would take on their own efforts to undermine the organizational endeavors of the working class by any means. From the Pullman Strike of 1894 to the PATCO Strike of 1981 to the union-busting efforts of Starbucks in the 2020s, the forces of capital have tirelessly fought to keep the worker in conditions of subordination.
New York State’s Mohawk Valley is generally an untapped area when it comes to the historical struggle of labor. Textile workers, trolley and bus drivers, teachers, all sects of the working class that have engaged in some sort of organized struggle within the region since at least the 19th century, if not even earlier. In the mid-1930s, workers in Ilion, New York, in addition to two other NY cites as well as towns in Ohio and Connecticut were engaged in a strike that would ultimately spark the invention of the blueprint for modern strikebreaking and union busting.
From 1936-1937, workers at various plants of the Remington Rand Company initiated a strike, demanding a 20% wage increase, the rehiring of 17 unjustly fired workers, as well as protesting the potential of closing the plant in Syracuse, NY in favor of moving production to a newly acquired plant in Elmira, about two hours away from the prior. Upwards of 6000 Remington Rand employees put their boots on the ground for this fight. The response from the capitalists in some ways was typical of the rich classes, they weren’t happy seeing workers organizing in solidarity. Industrialist and owner of the company, James Rand Jr., let his disdain for unions be put on full display as he sought to crush the efforts of the six striking plants. After the workers were able to unionize in 1934, Rand made it his mission to harass and attack the union with the goal of dissolving anything even resembling a union.
Rand’s anti-union character reached a peak during the 1936-1937 strike. The Remington Rand company was able to file an injunction that temporarily limited the strikers’ ability to engage in pickets, and likewise filed an additional injunction that briefly blocked the National Labor Relations Board from holding hearings on the dispute between Rand and the workers in July of 1936. The pinnacle of Rand’s anti-labor rhetoric and actions came in the midst of the strike, with Rand and other higher ups in the company composing what became known as the Mohawk Valley Formula.
The Mohawk Valley Formula gets its name because it was initially introduced at the Ilion, NY plant, a village in the region. Sources vary on exactly how many points there are to this formula, but the number typically sits between 8-10 different tenets of this anti-worker, anti-union formulation. Rand’s formula would go on to become the blueprint used for strikebreaking and union-busting up to the modern day. Though in some form it does encompass the use of violence, the MV Formula is described more so as a strategy built on a framework of propaganda as described by Noam Chomsky. Others have written about the structure of this formula, such as Robert G. Rodden of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in his work The Fighting Machinists: A Century of Struggle as well as CIO organizer John Steuben in his work Strike Strategy, but for our purposes, a detailed and concise outline of the tenets of this capitalist formula published in The Nation in 1937 will be used for reference.
Described in the article as “big business vigilantism” as well as the “scab ten commandments,” journalist Benjamin Stolberg lays out what each piece of this formula is designed to in supporting the narratives and endeavors of the capitalist ruling class.
The first step in this anti-strike program is to refer to union leaders and other strikers as “agitators,” often times being called “outside agitators” to prey on the xenophobia entrenched within much of the US populace. In tandem, the capitalists and their allies will spread propaganda against the union designed to trivialize their grievances and infantilize them, painting them as having arbitrary demands or claiming that those who decided to strike were only a minority that was upsetting the livelihoods of the rest of the workers.
Step two is to place economic/financial pressure on the striking masses. This includes moving or at least threatening to move plants, continued refusal of a raise, and other similar actions. An additional effort of this step is to create an astroturfed group design to oppose the strike in a smaller-scale example of enforcing capitalist hegemony. This is typically through the creation of “citizens committees,” made up of bankers, landlords, business men, and others benefiting from privately owned means of production and living.
The third step is a precursor to a political tactic that gained prominence in the late 1960s. Before Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan espoused it as a significant aspect of their presidencies, the MV Formula called for an adherence to “law and order” based on false narratives of violence being carried out by strikers. As with the future use of it, this instance of “law and order” is used to attack the civil liberties of the striking workers through legal attacks and further arming the police.
Step four connects to step two in that the “citizens committee” will begin to try to rally the general community in being against the strike in a mass propaganda campaign. Historically this has been done through using leaflets and utilizing the local press to publish pieces condemning the struggling masses.
The fifth step, acting in conjunction with step three, is where the most potential for violence lays. At this point the capitalists will increase their cooperation with police to build up a police vanguard against the union. Local police, sometimes even state police, will lead the charge, with both institutions utilizing privately hired deputies and security to create a loosely trained militia designed to intimidate the workers and crack skulls if they feel inclined to do so. This is especially prevalent in the Little Falls Textile Strike of 1912-1913, a precursor to the official establishing of the formula, when police violently broke up the picket line and wantonly raided the strikers’ headquarters, resulting in a mass of arrests on unfounded charges.
Once again seen in the example of the strike in Little Falls, as well as several others similar struggles, the sixth step in the Mohawk Valley Formula is to orchestrate a phony “back-to-work” movement. Such a movement is designed to deteriorate the morale of those actually on strike, attempting to guilt the strikers into ending their fight early and creating more propagandistic ammunition for the various media outlets to demonize them. The Stolberg article cites the use of a “puppet association” of people acting on the whim of the company owner. In the case of Little Falls, this was done by the mill owners working with the American Federation of Labor. The AFL was claiming to be the true representative of the workers and negotiated a settlement to “end” the strike, all while the actual strikers working with the Industrial Workers of the World remained on the picket line.
Step number seven is perhaps the biggest application of capitalist propaganda. In conjunction with the citizens’ committee and the supposed supporters of the “back-to-work” movement, the company owners set a date for officially “reopening” the plant, and in preparation they ensure that the plant and its surrounding areas are well equipped with police and security in the event that the “agitators” tried anything.
Step eight is simply an extension of the previous step, to put as many theatrics into the reopening as possible. News stories, flyers, TV or internet ads in the modern day, and using whatever other media to promote the reopening.
The ninth step is likewise a simple extension of previous steps. Keep putting pressure on the strikers through the police force and the illegitimate citizens’ committee, and using the same methods to ensure that those who have may actually chosen to leave the picket line stay off the picket line.
The final piece of this barbaric formula is to say that the plant, or really whatever institution is being picketed, is back up and running at full operation. Returning to the first step, the trivializing and dismissing of the demands of the strikers as a minority are reinforced by the capitalists, furthering the accusations of being “agitators” by claiming that they were interfering with people’s “right to work.”
With so many adopting elements of this formula without even knowing it, such as when reactionaries decry unions as “useless,” or when they speak ill of service workers fighting for some genuine representation and say in their workplace, the propaganda campaign of James Rand Jr. is shown to be extremely effective. Rand celebrated the effectiveness of his campaign, still feuding with the Remington Rand workers well after the NLRB required him to recognize their union. The Mohawk Valley Formula became revered by his fellow capitalists, and became the standard for strikebreaking and union busting.
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