In search of the rosetta stone of the mediation profession

Although people have their choice today of an ever-growing number of "how-t o" books and articles about the mediation process, this plenitude was hardl y always the case. In fact, back! in the early 1950s in the United States, three young mediators with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service ( FMCS) drafted a 62-page memo on the subject of their work which included 12 0 different techniques of mediation, many of which would be familiar and us eful to practitioners today. Their pioneering work, however, was neither re cognized nor encouraged by the FMCS; in fact, it was sup pressed This artic le focuses on the reasons for the suppression of that work, providing an ov erview of the vast changes that have taken place in mediation's history and the federal labor-management mediation agency over the past half-century.