Quotes About Trade Unions

#1. I can't help to spit nails when just thinking about Trade Unions

Margaret Thatcher

#2. The trade unions and the Labour Party ... failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing.

Arthur Scargill

#3. The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted
or rather tend to be corrupted
by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people.

Vladimir Lenin

#4. I would not go so far as to say that the French trade unions attached greater importance to the struggle for peace than the others did; but they certainly seemed to take it more to heart.

Leon Jouhaux

#5. It is true that they paid much more attention to the trade unions because the trade unions were after all speaking for the rights and conditions of working men and women in their employment.

Barbara Castle

#6. Trade unions are islands of anarchy in a sea of chaos.

Aneurin Bevan

#7. The trade unions, far from being content with these declarations, established international liaisons and supported every policy based on pacification and understanding.

Leon Jouhaux

#8. The clash between capital and labour, between those seeking to maximise profit and those with only their toil to sell, was the driving force for the creation of the trade unions in the 19th century.

David Blunkett

#9. Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.

Jacques Delors

#10. The trade unions in the UK are campaigning around zero-hours contracts, which isn't about feminism, but it's a feminist issue. Women are affected by zero-hours contracts, and the recession has and is affecting women more than men.

Rachel Holmes

#11. As I, as a worker, came to know them, the aims of German trade unions were political, and there were a number of various trade unions with varied political views.

Fritz Sauckel

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

Clarence Darrow

#13. Without the presence of class warfare, trade unions would be hard put to justfy their existence.

Karl Marx

#14. 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

#15. When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

Langston Hughes

#16. Trade unions are a force for good - a force for a more equal society.

Jeremy Corbyn

#17. There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#18. The main difference lies in wage levels, which is because our workers are not yet as well trained as in other countries. We are a poor country. This is why we must accept the conditions that prevail in international markets. But our trade unions do represent the rights of workers.

Nguyen Minh Triet

#19. Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.

Samuel Gompers

#20. In a political struggle of class against class, organization of trade unions is the most important weapon.

Friedrich Engels

#21. Given the fact that many thousands of female workers are active in history, it is vital for the trade unions to incorporate them into their movement.

Clara Zetkin

#22. I look back at history, and some of the worst governments we've ever had, you know one of the first things they ever did? They went after the trade unions.

Sherrod Brown

#23. This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity.

Lech Walesa

#24. But the question is to find and rear leaders that are really one with the masses. This can only be accomplished by the masses, the political parties and the Trade Unions, by means of the most severe struggle, also inwardly.

Herman Gorter

#25. At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about Acts, Trade Unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history.

Alison Weir

#26. Trade unions infringe upon the property rights of company owners.

Barry Goldwater

#27. I know that strong trade unions and best supported by Labour Government actually protect worker's rights.

Gisela Stuart

#28. Trade unions have been an essential force for social change, without which a semblance of a decent and humane society is impossible under capitalism.

Pope Francis

#29. 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

#30. This constitution recognises the need for social dialogue involving labour and management; it involves trade unions in the decision-making process; it has a social vision founded on social dialogue.

Jean-Pierre Raffarin

#31. What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves.

Lech Walesa

#32. The dissolution of the trade unions was in the air then.

Fritz Sauckel

#33. These latter institutions [the civil service, trade unions, media of all kinds], notably of course television, but more subtly the written press, are quite spectacular powers of unreason and ignorance.

Alain Badiou

#34. I do believe that not just the churches but strong communities, strong trade unions, strong families can make a difference in terms of producing persons much more virtuous than what one usually finds in a gangster culture.

Cornel West

#35. Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.

John Ruskin

#36. By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights the right to belong to a free trade union.

Ronald Reagan

#37. The hellish instruments of war must be smoked out while there is still peace. The Trade Union Movement must be compelled not to allow their old resolutions to fade in the files.

Carl Von Ossietzky

#38. The countries that have risen and separated out as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union are, on the whole, following freer economic policies. Most of these states have freer government and less restrictions on trade.

Milton Friedman

#39. I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field.

Albert Einstein

#40. The petite bourgeoise and small property in general represent a precious zone of autonomy and freedom in state systems increasingly dominated by large public and private bureaucracies.

James C. Scott

#41. It is time someone put in a good word for the petite bourgeoise. Unlike the working class and capitalists, who have never lack for spokespersons, the petite bourgeoise rarely, if ever, speaks for itself.

James C. Scott

#42. We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick ... the trade union for the nation as a whole.

Edward Heath