You know as well as I do the terrible conditions in the coalfields, and the suffering of the women and children. I have been compelled to do the most unpleasant tasks of begging for food, money, boots, and cast-off clothing. Practically every day young men, stranded, call for food, clothing and shelter at my office. I have done my best for them. Every day the post brings letters to me and Mrs Cook begging for help, especially from expectant mothers, terrible epistles of agony and despair.
I have heard their cry for help, and have done all I can to give assistance. I have helped all I can, begged all I can, till I have been almost demented and in despair, because I hate charity and reliefs which make us all beggars ...
I now want remedies instead of relief. The more poverty increases, the more our people sink into despair and become the hopeless prey of all the most reactionary influences and movements. A J Cook, open letter to Arthur Horner
6,000 SACKED PRINT WORKERS: SOGAT AUEW HGA NUJ UNITED WE WILL WIN. Wapping Union protest banner
In devilish dreams the horror show of deep-frozen Saturday nights fronting the gates of Hades at Murdoch’s Wapping. Snorting leviathan lorries smashing down the hill at the barbed wire and the purple-faced protesters, rage-red front covers of The Sun flapping like pirate flags in the windscreens. Bobby-boys in blue finger tenderly their bully-sticks. esias
The Mafia made a mockery of the traditional role of the labour unions. Mafia Empire: Vow of Silence, 2006
Loan-sharking, trucks & fencing, extortion, protection rackets, and infamous Mafia-run union scams. Unions controlled everything from construction to garbage. So the Mafia took over the unions. They plundered the pension plans. Mafia’s Greatest Hits: Joe Colombo: The Maverick Mobster, 2012
Very experienced in thuggery. They [The Syndicate] shook down local push-cart vendors. They worked on behalf of the unions ... They worked on behalf of management to intimidate the unions. Mark Gribben, crime historian
Anybody else want to join the union? Lilyhammer II: The Flamingo starring Steven van Zandt & Trond Fausa Aurvag & Marian Saastad Ottesen & Steinar Sagen & Anne Krigsvoll et al, BBC 2012
All this maintenance business – the only reason they don’t give this job to the service robots is they’ve got a better union than us. Red Dwarf s1e1: The End, Lister to Rimmer, BBC 1988
Of course I’m going to do something; I’m going to dock his pay. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e16: The Bar Association, Quark, re collapsed Rom
No sick days, no vacations, no paid overtime. ibid. Rom to Bahir
It’s either a pay-cut or a lay-off: you decide. ibid. Quark to staff
We’re going to form a union ... Are you with me? ibid. Rom to staff
He was more than a hero; he was a union man. ibid. O’Brien to Rom, with Bashir
We’re the guild of restaurant and casino employees. ibid. Rom to Quark
Rom: Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.
Quark: What’s happened to you? ibid.
Rule of Acquisition 211: employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them. ibid. Ferengi to strikers
Let’s get back on the picket line and show Quark what we’re made of. ibid. Rom to strikers
Remember, in unity there is strength. So be strong. ibid.
The independent trade unions are dissolved. Visions of War: The World in Flames, 2012
Unions were relatively new in America, and Frick wasn’t about to let them take root on his watch. The Men Who Built America IV: Blood is Spilt, History 2012
Two-thousand steel workers barricaded the front of the plant to prevent Frick bringing in replacements. ibid.
The public’s outrage was escalating. ibid.
They would not be allowed to carry out any overt union activity on McDonald’s premises. McLibel (Two People Who Wouldn’t Say Sorry) 1997 ***** starring Helen Steel & David Morris & Eric Schlosser & Morgan Spurlock & Oliver Ford Davies, directors Franny Armstrong & Ken Loach, trial judge
Since 1980 eight Coca-Cola union factory workers have been murdered by paramilitaries in Colombia. Surviving members of the union SINALTRAINAL claim that Coca-Cola bottlers collaborated with the paramilitaries. Since the murders colleges and other schools around the world have kicked Coca-Cola off their campuses. The Cost of a Coke Revisited
Former union leaders now live in hiding. ibid.
The same night the union office was set on fire, and its leadership ordered to meet a paramilitary commander. ibid.
Killer Cola. The Drink That Represses. ibid.
Coca-Cola hired, contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary forces to murder, torture, illegally detain or otherwise silence trade union leaders. ibid.
Coca-Cola has come under intense scrutiny in India too. They were forced to shut down a plant in India after they had been found guilty of depleting and contaminating the water supply. ibid.
Even in Turkey they have denied workers their rights to unionise. ibid.
The cost of human life has now been calculated into the profits of the Coca-Cola company. ibid.
Coke Further Undermines Colombian Investigation: Employers led by a Coca-Cola executive [Ed Potter] stopped the International Labour Organisation examining violations of workplace rights in Colombia. The Sydney Morning Herald online report 6th June 2007, post 14th June 2007
The oil companies were anti-union, and anyone involved in union activity could find themselves on a one-way ticket home ... But some oil workers were starting to want their own union. Crude Britannia: The Story of North Sea Oil 2/3, BBC 2009
But OILC never achieved across-the-board union recognition. The cost of the industrial action was high, around 1,000 contract workers were sacked and blacklisted. The strikes cost the operations £200,000,000. ibid.
The struggle of ordinary people for jobs, security and dignity is the story of modern Britain. It’s been an epic story of gain and setback and courage – the miners, the transport workers, the nurses, the dockers, and it’s still going on especially here in Liverpool, although you wouldn’t know it reading the people’s papers. John Pilger, Breaking the Mirror: The Murdoch Effect, ITV 1997
The franchise operator in Guatemala in the ’70s was John C Trotter, a Texan who believed that godless communism had infiltrated everywhere except the Coca-Cola Company. Guatemala has one of the worst records on human rights. Death squads murder with impunity while four out of five children suffer with malnutrition. Trotter paid his Coca-Cola workers less than two dollars a day. And when they began to unionise, three union officials were murdered and two union lawyers were kidnapped. John Pilger, Burp! Coke Versus Pepsi, ITV 1984
Japan is a nation of masks. Learning to live behind a mask is a prerequisite of much of Japanese civilisation ... Behind perhaps the most impenetrable mask of all the subtle yet forceful way the Japanese establishment is today reclaiming a nationalism denied them since the Second World War. John Pilger, Japan: Behind the Mask, ITV 1987
Under the American occupation of General Douglas MacArthur a new constitution was formulated which gave the defeated Japanese new freedoms. But who today are the beneficiaries of these new freedoms? The ordinary people of Japan who had suffered so terribly, or the great reborn companies like Mitsubishi which had formed the industrial and financial base of the war? ... In 1946 General MacArthur cancelled the right of public workers to strike ... The legacy of MacArthur’s ban was the weakening of real trade-union opposition in Japan, thus today the outside world sees only the mask of a docile workforce and a consensus society. ibid.
Women who work for less than £2 an hour, six days a week, no sick pay, no pension, and three days holiday a year if they are lucky: 40% of Japan’s labour force are women, who receive less than half the pay and none of the fringe benefits of the men. ibid.
Today the face of Japan is strong and confident, but the cracks reveal that many working people are quite unlike the happy stereotypes, and living conditions are poor compared to the nation’s wealth, and the young are trapped in a moulding process which too often leads to tragedy. ibid.