The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish. — Samuel Gompers
Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected. — Samuel Gompers
In a political struggle of class against class, organization of trade unions is the most important weapon. — Friedrich Engels
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
It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work. — Susan B. Anthony
Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor. — A. Philip Randolph
Without the presence of class warfare, trade unions would be hard put to justfy their existence. — Karl Marx
Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth... — Dolores Huerta
The labor movement is organized upon a principle that the strong shall help the weak. — John L. Lewis
Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. — Ronald Reagan
The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor. — Thomas R. Donahue
You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political party and strike and vote together, and the hour you do that, the world is yours. — Eugene V. Debs
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. — Dalai Lama
We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind. — Joni Mitchell
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw of the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in you sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. — Thomas Jefferson
Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence. This is the equation. — Averroes
Less is more. Simplicity is awesome. That's all you need in life. Its just my personal philosophy. — G-Eazy
The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.
Everything is Energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you can not help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics. — Unknown Author
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. — Kahlil Gibran
My philosophy is: if you don't bear a cross, you can't wear a crown so you gotta go through some form of humiliation to reach tribulation. — Peter Tosh
Labor Union Quotes
The people united will never be defeated. — Cesar Chavez
What can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command. — Eugene V. Debs
My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing. — Mother Jones
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds. Explore. Dream. Discover.
No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them." - Franklin D. Roosevelt — Franklin D. Roosevelt
One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts. — Molly Ivins
It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label. — Barack Obama
Our movement is of the working people, for the working people, by the working people. . . . There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish. — Samuel Gompers
Labor never quits. We never give up the fight - no matter how tough the odds, no matter how long it takes. — George Meany
Teachers Unions Quotes
Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future. — Mitt Romney
We're not spending enough money, but probably we let the teachers unions set curriculas which don't teach them the right things. There's not emphasis on the ...the basic learning that you need if you're going to go on in a college and into post-graduate work. — Rupert Murdoch
They believe in teachers unions. We believe in teachers. — Chris Christie
So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers' unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do. — Thomas Sowell
Teacher unions are an interest group that acts in defense of their own interests, which means the union bosses' interests, not the members. — Peter Brimelow
The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It's terrible. — Steve Jobs
I want to work with the teachers' union. But as I said out there, we have to put the kids first and we are letting down a generation of California children. It's not acceptable. — Meg Whitman
I was my own teacher and pupil, in a comradeship so firm and persevering that the most trying incidents of my life served only to strengthen the union. — Andres Segovia
Low standards are a tactic that takes pressure off teachers unions by accepting mediocrity and failure for kids. — Jeb Bush
I am not going to make any commitments to the teachers union to do anything until they do something that's other than in their own self- interest. And everything they have done so far is in their self-interests, and that's it. — Chris Christie
Labour Movement Quotes
United we stand, divided we fall is one of the oldest and truest slogans of the Labour movement. — Jeremy Corbyn
Such a scheme.. the betrayal of the national democracy of Industrial Ulster, would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements while it lasted. — James Connolly
In some ways, [the student anti-sweatshop movement] is like the anti-apartheid movement, except that in this case its striking at the core of the relations of exploitation. Much of this was initiated by Charlie Kernaghan of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. — Sayings
We have a great objective - the light on the hill - which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand. If it were not for that, the Labour movement would not be worth fighting for. — Ben Chifley
The labor movement means just this: It is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth. — Wendell Phillips
The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America. — John F. Kennedy
If a Labour movement, on a bourgeois basis, has hitherto existed in the country where the new movement is awakening it will certainly not disappear all at once. — Karl Radek
Arthur Scargill is the Labour movements nearest equivalent to a First World War General. — Neil Kinnock
Labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun. — Eugene V. Debs
In general, if signs of sectarianism do appear in a Socialist Party, these are only the products of the absence of a broad Labour movement in the country. — Karl Radek
Labor Movement Quotes
Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate. — John L. Lewis
The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
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
a labor victory must be economic and it must be revolutionizing. — Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
The wage-earning class the world over are the victims of society. — Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
To me, the labor movement was never just a way of getting higher wages. What appealed to me was the spiritual side of a great cause that created fellowship. You wanted the girl or the man who worked beside you to be treated just as well as you were, and an injury to one was the concern of all. — Rose Schneiderman
If we don't have workers organized into labor unions, we're in great peril of losing our democracy. — Dolores Huerta
Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands. — Mother Jones
I would be the last to condemn the thousands of sincere and dedicated people outside the churches who have labored unselfishly through various humanitarian movements to cure the world of social evils, for I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommitted Christian. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum. — Joseph De Maistre
Collective Bargaining Quotes
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
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
Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party-tinged Republican, is the advance guard of a new GOP push to dismantle public-sector unions as an electoral force. — Howard Fineman
To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that. — Janeane Garofalo
It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government. — George Meany
Organizing around a common interest is a fundamental part of democracy. We should no more try to take away the right of individuals to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to a secret ballot. — Michael Bloomberg
In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy. — James Surowiecki
Large scale collective bargaining . . . is merely a seductive name for bilateral monopoly, and means either adjudication of conflicts in terms of power, or deadlock and stoppage, usually injuring outside people more than the immediate parties to the dispute. — Frank Knight
My personal view is that nobody should stand between an employer and employee when it comes to employment contract negations. Not the government and not meddlesome third parties. This includes the ability for individuals to bargain collectively with their employers. — Mark Noble
As I learn more and more about the six-year extension of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, it's obvious to me that NFL owners understood that they were going to get a new deal done at all costs. — Ron Jaworski
Organized Labor Quotes
Wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized protected robbery. — Frantz Fanon
Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined effort for a common object, but to indulge in declamation and denunciation, and especially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work. — William Graham Sumner
It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize. — Theodore Roosevelt
Business, labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources that are vital in helping to build a more robust global community. — Kofi Annan
If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves. — Lane Kirkland
If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor. — Frank Lloyd Wright
Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America. — John L. Lewis
If the workers are organized, all they have to do is to put their hands in their pockets and they have got the capitalist class whipped. — Bill Haywood
Every advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another-came with the support and leadership of American Labor. — Jimmy Carter
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior ofcapital, and deserves muchthe higher consideration. — Abraham Lincoln
The Berlin Wall wasn't the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also fell. — Fareed Zakaria
The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness. — Vladimir Lenin
Much of the Greek coastline comprises steep cliffs and there are few coastal plains for agriculture. Inland are more steep cliffs, rivers that will not allow transportation, and few wide, fertile valleys. There is too little good agricultural land for Greece to become a major agricultural exporter, or to develop more than a handful of major urban areas containing highly educated, highly skilled, and technologically advanced populations. Its situation is further exacerbated by its location, with Athens positioned at the tip of the peninsula, almost cut off from land trade with Europe. It is reliant on the Aegean Sea for access to maritime trade in the region — but across that sea lies Turkey, a large potential enemy. Greece spends a vast amount of euros, which it doesn’t have, on defense. There are about 1,400 Greek islands 6,000 if you include various rocks sticking out of the Aegean of which approximately 200 are inhabited. It takes a decent navy just to patrol this territory, never mind one strong enough to defer any attempt to take the islands over. The result is a huge cost in military spending that Greece doesn’t have. During the Cold War, the Americans, and to a lesser extent, the British were content to underwrite some of the military requirements in order to keep the Soviet Union out of the Aegean and the Mediterranean. When the Cold War ended, so did the checks. — Tim Marshall
The crisis in Ukraine is all the European Union's fault. Its leaders negotiated a trade deal with Ukraine, which essentially blackmailed the country to choose between Europe and Russia. — Marine Le Pen
We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession. — Samuel Gompers
If we want to make progress in key areas now, we have to build a multi-stakeholder process, harnessing the appropriate energies. So not only the politicians but also business, the wider civil society, and the trade union movement all have a contribution to make, whether it is at national or at international level. — Mary Robinson
Our shared histories and common values make us natural trading partners and we will continue to work with both the United Kingdom and the European Union as we move forward with this new decision. — Justin Trudeau
Social Democratic and trade union organs have approved of the illegal invasion of Belgium, of the massacre of suspected guerrillas, as well as their wives and children, as well as the destruction of their homes in various towns and districts. — Clara Zetkin
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
The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain. — Arthur Scargill
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
For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. — George Orwell
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
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
There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn't have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement. — Bob Hawke
Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which diverent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State. — Benito Mussolini
It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to agree to any and every sacrifice, and even - if need be - to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist work in them at all costs. — Vladimir Lenin
I am for joining a free trade zone. The European Union is not such zone, but a zone of raging bureaucracy which stears every hectolitre of wine, and every tone of beef. — Janusz Korwin-Mikke
The trade unions are a long-established and essential part of our national life. We take our stand by these pillars of our British society as it has gradually developed and evolved itself, of the right of individual labouring men to adjust their wages and conditions by collective bargaining, including the right to strike. — Winston Churchill
Trade unionism is not socialism. It is the capitalism of the proletariat. — George Bernard Shaw
there is nothing more American than the trade-union movement. — Rose Schneiderman
People must learn more and more that the strength of this country is the democratic power of the trade union movement. — Michael Foot
Hence, within the space of two generations there has been a complete revolution in the attitude of the trades-unions toward the women working in their trades. — Florence Kelley
... it is the spirit of trade unionism that is most important, the service of fellowship, the feeling that the hurt of one is the concern of all and that the work of the individual benefits all. — Rose Schneiderman
Trade unions are islands of anarchy in a sea of chaos. — Aneurin Bevan
No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down. — George Bernard Shaw
I fear that within 10 years gays, trade union activists and left wing politicians will be led off to the gas chambers. — Ken Livingstone
Are we all clear that we want to build something that can aspire to be a world power? In other words, not just a trading bloc but a political entity. Do we realise that our nation states, taken individually, would find it far more difficult to assert their existence and their identity on the world stage. — Romano Prodi
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. — Clarence Darrow
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
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
As much as I value an union of all the states, I would not admit the southern states into the union, unless they agreed to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it would bring weakness and not strength to the union. — George Mason
Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past. — Jacques Delors
The European Union and the United States of America are the big important economic areas for us, which is why I always have come up strongly in favor of concluding a trade agreement with the United States of America. — Angela Merkel
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
At Leeds the idea of an international labour organization appeared in a trade-union text which also drew attention to the danger to the working classes inherent in the existence of international capitalist competition. — Leon Jouhaux
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical. — Henry George
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
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