Quotes About Labor Movement

“A final word should be said concerning the status of free blacks. Before the American Revolution this status had been ambiguous, and the number of free blacks was insignificant. < ... > A rash of new laws, similar to the later Black Codes of Reconstruction, reduced free blacks almost to the status of slaves without masters. The new laws regulated their freedom of movement, forbade them to associate with slaves, subjected them to surveillance and discipline by whites, denied them the legal right to testify in court against whites, required them to work at approved jobs, and threatened them with penal labor if not actual reenslavement.”

— David Brion Davis

“Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last couple of decades, we see increasing numbers of black people who are in the leadership of the labor movement and this is true today.”

— Angela Davis

“The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?”

— Andy Stern

“I would say the issue for the labor movement in the United States is not structural ... there is no correlation between the success of workers and how the labor movement is structured.”

— Andy Stern

“There is nothing stronger than the American labor movement. United, we cannot and we will not be turned aside. We'll work for it, sisters and brothers. We'll stand for it. Together. Each of us. To bring out the best in America. To bring out the best in ourselves, and each other.”

— Richard Trumka

“I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.”

— Astrid Lindgren

“All the time our union was progressing very nicely. There were lectures to make us understand what trades unionism is and our real position in the labor movement.”

— Rose Schneiderman

“We have seen the civil rights movement insist on re-writing many of the textbooks in our universities and schools. The labor unions likewise insist that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor. Other interested citizens groups have not hesitated to review, analyze and criticize textbooks and teaching materials.”

— Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

“I was working with C. L. R. James; I believed in Marxist ideas about the labor and movement and the workers being the secret to the future. And I learned differently just by being in Detroit and being married to Jimmy Boggs.”

— Grace Lee Boggs

“My parents had been involved in the labor movement; if we'd grown up in the city, we would have been red-diaper babies.”

— Holly Near

“Before the war there were many who were more or less ignorant of the international labor movement but who nevertheless turned to it for salvation when the threat of war arose. They hoped that the workers would never permit a war.”

— Hjalmar Branting

“The strike of the miners in Arizona was one of the most remarkable strikes in the history of the American labor movement. Its peaceful character, its successful outcome, were due to that most remarkable character, Governor Hunt.”

— Mary Harris Jones

“What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people ... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie ... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us.”

— Jim Hightower

“What my Republican colleagues often don't understand is that labor is a human-rights issue. I have to remind them Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement brought down the Communist bloc.”

— Chris Smith

“The labor movement means just this: it is the last noble protest of the American people against the power of incorporated wealth.”

— Wendell Phillips

“I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.”

— John Sweeney

“So May 4th in the labor movement has always been an important date.”

— William Kunstler

“I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.”

— Paul Robeson

“Well, we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as a result of the overall assault on the labor movement and as a result of the globalization of capital.”

— Angela Davis

“In the late 19th century there was a major union organization, Knights of Labor, and also a radical populist movement based on farmers. It's hard to believe, but it was based in Texas, and it was quite radical. They wanted their own banks, their own cooperatives, their own control over sales and commerce.”

— Noam Chomsky

“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

“The labor movement is our brother's keeper! The labor movement is our sister's keeper!”

— Thomas Perez

“Reconstruction was a vast labor movement of ignorant, muddled, and bewildered white men who had been disinherited of land and labor and fought a long battle with sheer subsistence, hanging on the edge of poverty, eating clay and chasing slaves and now lurching up to manhood.”

— W.E.B. Du Bois

“After analyzing our current crisis and studying well-established
historical precedents, I must conclude that the global bankers have
only three possible cards left to play.
The first is admitting culpability and working to restore the
American economic engine to its free-market potential. History has
taught us that the ruling class rarely admits error and never concedes
power.
The second is to foment so much civil unrest and fear that the
general population will be clamoring for a global dictator who will
provide them food, shelter, and security in exchange for their individual
freedom and sovereignty. I see the emerging militancy of the
labor union movement playing right into this scenario.
The final play is global conflict where they can try and control
the outcome by means of funding both sides.”

— Ziad K. Abdelnour

“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

“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

“The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women's movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights.”

— Dolores Huerta

“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

“With all of the talk about polling and demographics, I think too many people have lost touch with the human and moral crisis of deportations. Every day, roughly 1,000 people are deported because the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is denying the majority of the US Congress a chance to vote on citizenship. I will be arrested today because the labor movement stands with the families tragically ripped apart by John Boehner and the House Republicans' embrace of a broken immigration system.”

— Arlene Holt Baker

“The trade agreement has become a rather distinct feature of the American labor movement ... It is based on the idea that labor shall accept the capitalist system of production and make terms of peace with it.”

— Mary Ritter Beard

“But, if you think that by hanging us, you can stamp out the labor movement - the movement from which the downtrodden millions, the millions who toil and live in want and misery - the wage slaves - expect salvation - if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here you will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out.”

— August Spies

“Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues ... A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement. For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they [only] marshal us in the way that we are going.”

— Bergen Evans

“The labor movement is organized upon a principle that the strong shall help the weak.”

— John L. Lewis

“The labor movement must be destroyed.”

— Karl Rove

“In less than a century we experienced great movement. The youth movement! The labor movement! The civil rights movement! The peace movement! The solidarity movement! The women's movement! The disability movement! The disarmament movement! The gay rights movement! The environmental movement! Movement! Transformation! Is there any reason to believe we are done?”

— Holly Near

“History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The origin of the labor movement lies in self-defense ...”

— Mary Ritter Beard

“So long as we have held fast to voluntary principles and have been actuated and inspired by the spirit of service, we have sustained our forward progress, and we have made our labor movement something to be respected and accorded a place in the councils of the Republic. Where we have blundered into trying to force a policy or decision, even though wise and right, we have impeded if not interrupted the realization of our own aims.”

— Samuel Gompers

“[The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves ...”

— Samuel Gompers

“The organized labor movement as it is constituted today is as much a concomitant of a capitalist economy as is capital. Organized labor is predicated upon the basic premise of collective bargaining between employers and employees. This premise can obtain only for an employer-employee type of society. If the labor movement is to maintain its own identity and security, it must of necessity protect that kind of society.”

— Saul Alinsky

“Today I send this message to every emerging global corporation: "justice; family, community, and union" are the same in every language and, wherever you go and whatever you do, a new global labor movement is coming to find you.”

— Andy Stern

“The labor movement has a great role to play in our country today.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. 'But notwithstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.”

— Eugene V. Debs

“The labor movement had been pretty much killed in the 1920s, almost destroyed. It revived in the 1930s and made a huge difference. By the late 1930s the business world was already trying to find ways to beat it back.”

— Noam Chomsky

“They's making it worse, the labor movement got the mafia curse.”

— Frank Zappa

“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

“Collective bargaining has always been the bedrock of the American labor movement. I hope that you will continue to anchor your movement to this foundation. Free collective bargaining is good for the entire Nation. In my view, it is the only alternative to State regulation of wages and prices - a path which leads far down the grim road of totalitarianism. Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor - those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized - do a disservice to the cause of democracy.”

— John F. Kennedy

“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

“In England, there are only two things to be, basically: You are either for the labor movement or for the capitalist movement. Either you become a right-wing Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive socialist, which I was.”

— John Lennon