Labor Union Quotes - Page 2

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

  Harry Bridges

  Goes On, Organized Labor, Unions

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• 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

  Struggle, Skills, Unions

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• Every piece of progressive social legislation passed by Congress in the 20th century bears a union label.

  George Meany

  Struggle, Labels, Pieces

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• 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

  Country, Mean, Labor Day

  Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, June 16, 1933.

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• It is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of working conditions, because the best customer of American industry is the well-paid worker.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Real, Presidential, Unions

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1936, Volume 5”, p.504, Best Books on

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

  Noam Chomsky

  Progress, Unions, Force

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• The conservative goal has been the Third Worldization of the United States: an increasingly underemployed, lower-wage work-force; a small but growing moneyed class that pays almost no taxes; the privatization or elimination of human services; the elimination of public education for low-income people; the easing of restrictions against child labor; the exporting of industries and jobs to low-wage, free-trade countries; the breaking of labor unions; and the elimination of occupational safety and environmental controls and regulations.

  Michael Parenti

  Country, Jobs, Children

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

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Organization, Labor Day

  The Railroad Trainman, November 1909.

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• You can't do it unless you organize.

  Samuel Gompers

  Organized Labor, Unions, Organize

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• Equality is the heart and essence of democracy, freedom, and justice, equality of opportunity in industry, in labor unions, schools and colleges, government, politics, and before the law. There must be no dual standards of justice, no dual rights, privileges, duties, or responsibilities of citizenship. No dual forms of freedom.

  A. Philip Randolph

  Heart, School, Responsibility

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• The important role of union organizations must be admitted: their object is the representation of the various categories of workers, their lawful collaboration in the economic advance of society, and the development of the sense of their responsibility for the realization of the common good.

  Pope Paul VI

  Responsibility, Organization, Important

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• 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

  Struggle, Order, Long

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• Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.

  Molly Ivins

  Heart, Giving, Salary

  "Labor’s Fight Is OUR Fight" by Dave Johnson, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 29, 2012.

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• 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

  Future, Thoughtful, America

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• 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

  School, Men, Land

  Address to the Minnesota State AFL-CIO Convention, 1977.

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• As it has over the decades, the union movement stands for the fundamental moral values that make America strong: quality education for our children, affordable health care for every person-not just some-an end to poverty, secure pensions and wages that enable families to sustain the middle-class life that has fueled this nation's prosperity and strength. Union members and other working family activists don't just vote our moral values-we live them. We fight for them, day in, day out. Our commitment to economic and social justice propels us and everything we do.

  John Sweeney

  Strong, Children, Commitment

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• 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

  Squares, Government, Citizens

  Theodore Roosevelt “Letters: The Square Deal, 1901-1905”

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• 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

  Country, Men, Ideas

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• 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

  Men, Two, America

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• 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

  Reality, Organization, Movement

  "Not Even Compulsory Benevolence Will Do". The American Federationist, Volume 24, 1917.

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• If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Work, Organized Labor, Unions

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• 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

  Independent Women, Dignity Of Work, Labor Day

  "Leadership Lessons of Abraham Lincoln: Apply the Principles of the Sixteenth President to Your Own Work and Life".

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• Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Humanity, Dignity, Building

  "Workers' rights are under threat across the world" by Keith Ewing, www.theguardian.com. April 4, 2011.

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• The best of wages will not compensate for excessively long working hours which undermine heath.

  Louis D. Brandeis

  Long, Wages, Unions

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

  Henry Ford

  Men, Independence, Earth

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