Quotes About The Labor Unions

#1. The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have a square deal, and in addition, all private citizens shall have a square deal.

Theodore Roosevelt

#2. If we take back the labor unions, the legitimate businesses, eventually they become just another street gang. Spiritually, psychologically, they've always been just a street gang.

Rudy Giuliani

#3. Any Hamas or Zionist type who tries to interfere with the labor unions and grab the money will be marched to the guillotines and subsequently beheaded. And isn't that easier and more productive than some endless, bloody conflict? So sayeth the gospel of common sense. Happy Mother's Day.

Roseanne Barr

#4. Speaking as a human being, not as a businessman - the unions are great. The unions are great for the working people because they protect you, but I didn't see them that way as a young man. First of all, the papers would connect them with thee communists - labor unions were communists.

Jack Kirby

#5. Labor cannot stand still. It must not retreat. It must go on, or go under.

Harry Bridges

#6. You can't do it unless you organize.

Samuel Gompers

#7. Many of the lower middle class are members of labor unions, churches, bowling clubs, fraternal, service, and nationality organizations. They are organizations and people that must be worked
with as one would work with any other part of our populations - with respect, understanding, and sympathy.

Saul Alinsky

#8. The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money.

Linda Chavez

#9. Just as there can be little doubt that labor unions are a significant political force, neither can there be much question that this political force is a by-product of the purely industrial activities that unions regard as their major function.

Mancur Olson

#10. All that harms labor is treason to America.

Abraham Lincoln

#11. It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#12. The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat.

Grover Norquist

#13. Margaret Thatcher made tough decisions. She put people out of work and she stood up to labor unions and she did a lot of things that I did not like.

Harvey Weinstein

#14. The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining-it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process.

Paul Clark

#15. I've spent quality time in the aerospace community, with my service on two presidential commissions, but at heart, I'm an academic. Being an academic means I don't wield power over person, place or thing. I don't command armies; I don't lead labor unions. All I have is the power of thought.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#16. In all the history of organized labor, from the earliest times to the present day, no body of union workingmen ever served in a more humiliating and debasing role than that in which the railway unions appear at this very hour before the American people and the world.

Eugene V. Debs

#17. It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.

Bonnie Raitt

#18. With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed.

Clarence Darrow

#19. The labor movement is people. Our unions have brought millions of men and women together, made them members one of another, and given them common tools for common goals. Their goals are goals for all America - and their enemies are the enemies for progress. The two cannot be separated.

John F. Kennedy

#20. The strategy we need to pursue is one of recovering our time - to push back on our hours of work. We need to form a new alliance between feminist groups, labor unions, child advocates, progressive corporations, and the federal government insofar as it's willing to pursue a family-friendly agenda.

Arlie Russell Hochschild

#21. Well, what there ought to be is an international labor organization, a confederation of the trade unions of all the countries speaking for the workers who are competing with one another, and talking about the difference in wage levels between, say, Europe and Indonesia.

Richard Rorty

#22. The Government as Substitute Husband did for women what labor unions still have not accomplished for men. And men pay dues for labor unions; the taxpayer pays the dues for feminism. Feminism and government soon become taxpayer-supported women's unions.

Warren Farrell

#23. There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.

Samuel Gompers

#24. We make our own labor unions. We organize our labor into units of 300, and then the representatives of these 300 meet together every week. Then every fortnight they meet with the head men.

Charles M. Schwab

#25. In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining ... . We demand this fraud be stopped.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#26. Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles.

Ralph Raico

#27. It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.

Eric Hoffer

#28. As Jim Lawrence, a black labor activist at a GM plant in Dayton, Ohio, describes it, during the 1960s 'the union gave foremen a blank check to mistreat blacks and keep them out of the high-rate machine jobs and the skilled trades.'

David T. Hardy

#29. Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.

John F. Kennedy

#30. I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

John Sweeney

#31. Labor # Unions are the leading force for # democratization and # progress .

Noam Chomsky

#32. In the 1970s, New York City avoided bankruptcy because wise political leaders like Gov. Hugh L. Carey believed both in strong labor unions and robust banks and companies.

Felix Rohatyn

#33. I've always had a very positive relationship with the municipal labor unions - a respectful relationship.

Bill De Blasio

#34. If we don't have workers organized into labor unions, we're in great peril of losing our democracy.

Dolores Huerta

#35. Finding a 'sacrificial lamb' on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation's economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.

Clayton Christensen

#36. I think when everything is finally considered, I'll have a lot of support
strong support
not only from labor unions but from working people.

Dick Gephardt

#37. I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

John Wells

#38. Human nature was such that individuals could respond to reason, to the call of justice, and even to the love perfection of the religious spirit, but nations, corporations, labor unions, and other large social groups would always be selfish.

Taylor Branch

#39. We will have bigger bureaucracies, bigger labor unions, and bigger state-run corporations. It will be harder to be an entrepreneur because of punitive taxes and regulations. The rewards of success will be expropriated for the sake of attaining greater income equality.

Arthur C. Brooks

#40. Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth because they take away a man's independence.

Henry Ford

#41. When you look at the money spent by labor unions for Democrats, it comes as no surprise the Democrats crafted a campaign-finance 'disclosure' bill with the thresholds adjusted to exempt unions.

Mark McKinnon

#42. The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.

Thomas Sowell

#43. In the no-nonsense school of adversity, which we did not choose for ourselves, we are learning how to operate a labor union.

Cesar Chavez

#44. The history of the labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land. America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life. We ought to be proud of it!

Hubert H. Humphrey

#45. Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money. When people get right with God, they are better workers.

Jerry Falwell

#46. The free worker receives a wage; the slave an education, food, care, clothing; the money that the master spends to keep the slave is drained little by little and in detail; one hardly perceives it.1

Alexis De Tocqueville