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
And the success of the union movement, historically, has always been to benefit all working men and women – not just people who belong to the union. Warren Beatty
The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth. Wendell Phillips
Organize, and stand together. Claim something together, and at once; let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but get something. Wendell Phillips
The miners are out of work ... Their problem is much more than a mining problem – it concerns the standards of living not only for themselves but in other parts of the world. Eleanor Roosevelt
In spite of oppressors, in spite of false leaders, in spite of labor’s own lack of understanding of its needs, the cause of the worker continues onward. Slowly his hours are shortened, giving him leisure to read and to think. Slowly his standard of living rises to include some of the good and beautiful things of the world. Slowly the cause of his children becomes the cause of all. His boy is taken from the breaker, his girl from the mill. 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
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
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living! Mother Jones, 1830-1930, The Autobiography of Mother Jones, 1925
The governor can stop a strike any time. If I were the governor I would stop a strike by simply saying, ‘These men have a grievance and demand redress from you. Come and discuss these questions with the miners on the fair soil of America like intelligent, law-abiding citizens. If you refuse I will close up your mines. I will have the state operate mines for the benefit of the nation.’ It is not right for public officials to bring scabs and gunmen into any state. I am directly opposed to it myself, but if it is a question of strike or you go into slavery, then I say strike until the last one of us drop into our graves. Mother Jones, 1913
On their side the workers had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. Mother Jones
Don’t mourn for me – organise! Joe Hill
Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave? Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave? Joe Hill
The idea that businesses will be driven to bankruptcy if strict environmental standards are adopted is the same tired line that has been brought up again and again since workers first organized to improve working conditions. It was brought up when child labour was eliminated, when the minimum wage was introduced, when Social Security and Unemployment Insurance were developed. Leonard Woodcock
When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs, angels weep in heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out ... Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared to a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not. Jack London
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
Our labour unions are NOT narrow self-serving groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievances procedures they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor. John F Kennedy, 1960
To remember the loneliness, the fear and the insecurity of men who once had to walk alone in huge factories, beside huge machines – to realize that labor unions have meant new dignity and pride to millions of our countrymen – human companionship on the job, and music in the home – to be able to see what larger pay checks mean, not to a man as an employee, but as a husband and as a father – to know these things is to understand what American labor means. Adlai Stevenson
There is nothing fairer than workmen having unions of their mutual benefit. Will Rogers
The history of the labor movements 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 Humphrey
What is a labor victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain a few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work with the same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to achieve a temporary gain and not a lasting victory. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
What precipitated the big strike in 1912, which is one of the great historical struggles in our country, was a political act on the part of the State. The hours of labor were reduced to 54 hours. You can imagine what they were before. That was only for women and children, but it affected something like 75% of the workers in the mills. On the first pay after the law went into effect, the employers cut the wages proportionately to the cut in hours and the wages were on the average of $7 and $8 a week at that time, and the highest pay to loom fixers and more highly skilled were getting possibly, $15 and $20. It was a margin between mere subsistence and starvation and so there was a spontaneous strike. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1962, re Bread and Roses Strike
When people ask me, ‘Why can’t labor organize the way it did in the thirties?’ The answer is simple: everything we did then is now illegal. Thomas Geoghegan
I would rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the victims of racism, and working people seeking a better life than with those whose religion is the status quo, whose goal is profit and whose hearts are cold. Douglas Fraser
There is a dawn approaching that is indicating and shouting to us that it’s our moment. But we’ve got to seize that moment and use what we know so well – how to organize and, fundamentally, how to fight! Tony Mazzocchi, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America speech 1998
If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men to capitalize their labor. Frank Lloyd Wright
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
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
All wealth is the product of labour. John Locke
There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them. William Tecumseh Sherman
In my time we was beaten, rotten egged, cussed, threatened, tarred and feathered and blackballed from other jobs. Hurt in so many different ways. But at our meetings our advice to the men and women that was hurt, we would just say to them what the good book says – the Lord will not put more upon you than you can bear, at least none of us lost our lives like some did in the early ’30s. Thank God! W M Jack Anderson, first president UAW local 645 TX
Without unions workers will lose many of the protections against abusive employers. Wages for all will be depressed, even as corporate profits soar. The American Dream will be destroyed for millions. And we will have a government of the corporations, by the already powerful, for the wealthy. Kenneth Bernstein, 2011
Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organised and that their organisations must be recognised by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
Labor will remain united and continue to work to protect the interests of America’s working families. William Burrus, November 2004