Representation and Rebellion

The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914-1942

Jonathan H. Rees

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780870819643
• eBook ISBN:
  9781607320401
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In response to the tragedy of the Ludlow Massacre, John D. Rockefeller Jr. introduced one of the nation's first employee representation plans (ERPs) to the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in 1915. With the advice of William Mackenzie King, who would go on to become prime minister of Canada, the plan—which came to be known as the Rockefeller Plan—was in use until 1942 and became the model for ERPs all over the world.In Representation and Rebellion Jonathan Rees uses a variety of primary sources—including records recently discovered at the company's former headquarters in Pueblo, Colorado—to tell the story of the Rockefeller Plan and those who lived under it, as well as to detail its various successes and failures. Taken as a whole, the history of the Rockefeller Plan is not the story of ceaseless oppression and stifled militancy that its critics might imagine, but it is also not the story of the creation of a paternalist panacea for labor unrest that Rockefeller hoped it would be.Addressing key issues of how this early twentieth-century experiment fared from 1915 to 1942, Rees argues that the Rockefeller Plan was a limited but temporarily effective alternative to independent unionism in the wake of the Ludlow Massacre. The book will appeal to business and labor historians, political scientists, and sociologists, as well as those studying labor and industrial relations.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE: MEMORIES OF A MASSACRE
• CHAPTER TWO: STUDENT AND TEACHER
• CHAPTER THREE: BETWEEN TWO EXTREMES
• CHAPTER FOUR: DIVISIONS IN THE RANKS
• CHAPTER FIVE: THE ROCKEFELLER PLAN IN ACTION: THE MINES
• CHAPTER SIX: THE ROCKEFELLER PLAN IN ACTION: THE MILL
• CHAPTER SEVEN: NEW UNION, SAME STRUGGLE
• CHAPTER EIGHT: DEPRESSION, FRUSTRATION, AND REAL COMPETITION
• CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX 1. The Colorado Industrial Plan (also known as the Rockefeller Plan) and the Memorandum of Agreement
• APPENDIX 2. Employee Representatives at CF&I Coal Mines, 1915–1928, and Employee Representatives at Minnequa Works, 1916–1928
• Notes
• Bibliographic Essay
• Index