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The company's campaign to keep workers from the polls worked almost flawlessly: only the UE faithful dared to turn out for the certification election. Of the 9,752 workers eligible, only 3,163 cast ballots-95 percent of them for UE Local 103. Despite the overwhelming majority of votes for Local 103…

After four weeks of false arrests, violence, intimidation, brutality, and threats of relocation, the stalemate finally broke when the company and the union settled on an election sponsored by theN ational Labor Relations Board (NLRB). John L. Lewis, who had been negotiating with Johnson throughout …

Violence and physical intimidation were not the only weapons in RCA's arsenal-the company's threat to move its investment elsewhere hung over the entire episode. Although at the time it could easily be dismissed as mere posturing, the threat was a constant element in RCA's strategy to break Local1 …

[...] the company hired men to provoke pickets at one door so nonunion workers could be ushered in through another. The union accused RCA of importing 700 strikebreakers, hundreds of whom were in violation of the new interstate antistrike breaking law recently signed by President Roosevelt. On many…

[...] Before and after work hours, roving bands of workers and thugs attacked each other with razor blades, stones, milk bottles, heavy nuts and bolts, and cans of paint that burst open on target; workers wielded lead pipes, swung their fists, and returned the next morning to hurl eggs and pour pep…