Andy Stern Quotes

#1. I'm not running from any particular problems, I just want to take some time and figure out in my life where I can keep doing what I'm doing but in a way that I can also honor what I want to do for myself.

Andy Stern

#2. The union movement has been the best middle class job creating program that America has ever had, and it doesn't cost the government a dime.

Andy Stern

#3. American workers won't be able to compete fairly for jobs until companies have to pay higher wages in countries like China and India.

Andy Stern

#4. The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

Andy Stern

#5. When I left SEIU, we had started this quality public service agenda to say to our members what I think the United Auto Workers learned: that quality is our only job security in the long run.

Andy Stern

#6. Republicans have been very successful. There are three things Americans don't like: big unions, big government and big corporations. So Republicans go after big government and big unions, and only talk about small businesses.

Andy Stern

#7. UNNATURAL CAUSES tears back the veil to show the socio-economic and racial inequities in health as well as the public policies that underpin them. Should be required viewing.

Andy Stern

#8. In 1972, I signed a union card for SEIU. And for the last 38 years, 14 as president, it's been my life. I've seen the most miraculous, spectacular things. But there's a time to learn, a time to lead and a time to leave.

Andy Stern

#9. And I think we understand we cannot make social change for all workers until we have enough strength, membership strength, and at the same time having membership strength and only making change for a limited group of workers is not what our country really needs for people that work.

Andy Stern

#10. Employers need to recognize that the world has changed and there are people who would like to help them provide solution in ways that are new, modern and that add value to companies.

Andy Stern

#11. Workers of the world unite. It's not just a slogan anymore.

Andy Stern

#12. I was too much of a victim of the model I created. I tried Change to Win and helping Obama, and then I just ran out of Andy Stern ideas.

Andy Stern

#13. The union is much more than me, and when you think the union is you and it's not about who you represent, I think you've sort of lost your morals and focus and the purpose of your leadership.

Andy Stern

#14. Unions have been the best anti-poverty program that actually worked and did not cost the government a dime. But as unions grow smaller- not stronger- our ability to act as an economic mechanism to distribute the gains of our work and raise all workers' wages and benefits up is disappearing.

Andy Stern

#15. America is living through the third economic revolution and our country doesn't really have a plan on how to deal with it, and when it does - like the president sort of outlined when he first got here - we have a Congress who seem incapable of acting on it.

Andy Stern

#16. Today I send this message to every emerging global corporation: "justice; family, community, and union" are the same in every language and, wherever you go and whatever you do, a new global labor movement is coming to find you.

Andy Stern

#17. College is about three things: homework, fun, and sleep ... but you can only choose two.

Andy Stern

#18. Once, a union job at GM or AT&T was a bridge to success. Now, a nonunion Wal-Mart job is a bridge to nowhere.

Andy Stern

#19. We can bring to earth a new world from the ashes of the old because our union transforms us the powerless into the powerful. And I ask you to join together in using all that power-all that strength to make the dreams of all workers and communities around the world come true.

Andy Stern

#20. Unions should not be lapdogs to a political party, they should be watchdogs for their members' interests.

Andy Stern

#21. Manufacturing and other unskilled professions that were union jobs, that allowed people to live a middle-class life, are disappearing both because unions are disappearing and because of the global nature of the economy.

Andy Stern

#22. Wal-Mart provides a chilling example of the damage that low-wage, nonunion corporations can wreak, and their business model is going to set the standards for our children unless we do something now. Wal-Mart is the sewer pipe through which good jobs are being flushed.

Andy Stern

#23. I would say the issue for the labor movement in the United States is not structural ... there is no correlation between the success of workers and how the labor movement is structured.

Andy Stern

#24. It has no enforceable standards to stop a union from conspiring with employers to keep another stronger union out or from negotiating contracts with lower pay and standards that members of another union have spent a lifetime establishing.

Andy Stern

#25. I'll never run for office. But I intend, either on the fiscal commission or on issues like immigration, to hopefully have my voice be heard.

Andy Stern

#26. I would say that workers in general, and white workers particularly, are correct that their economic wellbeing is deteriorating.

Andy Stern

#27. The AFL-CIO is a structure that divides workers' strength by allowing each union to organize in any industry, then bargain on its own, even when workers share a common employer.

Andy Stern