In May 1936, employees of the Remington Rand office equipment company went out on strike in New York, Ohio, and Middletown, Connecticut. But the strike was broken when Remington Rand's president, James H. Rand, Jr., deployed an innovative program of anti-union tactics. He organized local communities against the striking workers, agitated local and state governments to back the company, employed strikebreakers who used both subversive and violent means, and finally put the struck plants back in production using replacement workers. Rand called his strategy the \"Mohawk Valley formula.\" During and after the strike, unions were in a position to benefit from state intervention. New Deal policies and widespread labor militancy had put organized labor's allies in office and created institutions friendly to workers' interests. A federal grand jury indicted Rand for violating a new law against the interstate transportation of strikebreakers, and the National Labor Relations Board, its own authority newly upheld by the Supreme Court, issued a fiery denunciation of the company's actions. Finally, a Senate special committee led by Robert La Follette, Jr. held hearings to investigate the strike. But Rand did not concede. Eventually, ordered by a court to rehire thousands of strikers, he shut down and relocated three plants instead. This thesis is a history of the Remington Rand strike. It aims to analyze the Mohawk Valley formula in practice, examine the relationships between local and national union leaders, and use the strike as a case study in how workers and capitalists interacted with the state at an important moment in the history of industrial relations. On the last point, I argue, the Remington Rand strike provides cause for some skepticism about the state's role in advancing worker power.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 24156