Non Workers Union Quotes & Sayings

With my union project in my hand, from town to town, from one end of France to the other, to talk to the workers who do not know how to read and to those who do not have the time to read ... I will go find them in their workshops; in their garrets and even, if needed, in their taverns, and there, face to face with their poverty, I will compel them, in spite of themselves, to escape from this frightful poverty which is degrading and killing them. — Flora Tristan

You oil field workers, come and listen to me I'm goin' to tell you a story about old John D. That company union made a fool out of me. That company union don't charge no dues It leaves you a-singing them Rockefeller blues. That company union made a fool out of me. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin', rollin' over the sea. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin' over the sea. — Woody Guthrie

One of the girls read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for the oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labour. — Upton Sinclair

There are vivid memories from my childhood - what we had to go through because of low wages and the conditions, basically because there was no union. I suppose, if I wanted to be fair, I could say that I'm trying to settle a personal score. I could dramatize it by saying that I want to bring social justice to farm workers. — Cesar Chavez

My parents were both union members, and I grew up hearing how important it was to empower workers and have fair labor practices. — Hilda Solis

I am very pro-union and very anti-authority by nature, so by showing the housekeepers and valets, I was being loyal to those people - those workers. I'm glad that the service industry unionized. — Jacob Tomsky

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

Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions. — Michael Parenti

Farm workers everywhere are angry and worried that we cannot win without violence. We have proved it before through persistence, hard work, faith and willingness to sacrifice. We can win and keep our own self-respect and build a great union that will secure the spirit of all people if we do it through a re-dedication and re-commitment to the struggle for justice through non-violence. — Cesar Chavez

More frightening to me than any policy or politician is the ease with which the public is played for fools with words. The latest example is the 'Employee Freedom of Choice Act,' a bill that will do away with secret ballot elections among workers voting on whether to be represented by a union. It is an open invitation to intimidation - which is to say, loss of freedom of choice. — Thomas Sowell

In the past we couldn't talk to non-union workers. Now we can at least talk to non-union workers so we'll be mobilizing them and educating them not for just six or eight months before an election, but we'll be doing it year-round. — Richard Trumka

It is only in revolutionary struggle against the capitalists of every country, and only in union with the working women and men of the whole world, that we will achieve a new and brighter future-the socialist brotherhood of the workers. — Alexandra Kollontai

Now, years later and with Carnegie's blessing, Frick had launched his plan to further consolidate his rule over their industrial kingdom by destroying the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. The labor union, formed in 1876, was one of many that emerged in the industrial age to combat the cruel and oppressive treatment of workers. In the steel mills, workers typically put in 12-hour days, six days a week, for less than a dime an hour. There were no government agencies to inspect the work sites, no forms of compensation in case of injury, and more than 35,000 workers died each year in industrial accidents. Only the unions offered some hope by fighting for higher wages, eight-hour workdays, and improved working conditions. — James McGrath Morris

If we make a union in these fields, is there anything we can do to ensure it doesn't become corrupt? Or that later it doesn't only look after the people who work here, we just look after our own, and everyone else can fend for themselves? We need to fight for ourselves, here and now, but we also need changes so large and impossible they encompass the entire world. — Jacob Wren

The workers aren't going to stop struggling. They're going to struggle to have a union and they have the right to have it. The police repression and the grower indifference to the workers' demands for recognition cannot go unheard so we're going to keep on struggling until we get that recognition. — Cesar Chavez

I first went to Indonesia in 2001 for six months. I was to help a community of plantation workers to make a film documenting and dramatizing the struggle to organize a union in the aftermath of the Suharto dictatorship. — Joshua Oppenheimer

The trouble that public unions could potentially cause for citizens was one reason that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hero of Democrats and union organizers alike, opposed them for government workers. Republican Fiorello La Guardia, a great mayor of New York, opposed them, too. Unlike in the private sector, where unions were a needed counterweight to strong management, in the public sector unions had a big say in selecting management through the election process. As a result, they had a lot of power on both sides of the labor-management negotiating process. Roosevelt and La Guardia thus feared that, when government officials and unions battled over power, citizens could lose out. — Joel Klein

We must have more union members in this country to fight the political and business forces that are undermining workers in this country. The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach by planning to throw even more money at politicians. — James P. Hoffa

I respect unions, I think they have an important role to pay and I listen to them, we meet with them, and they raise valid points on a lot of issues like worker safety and so forth, but I also respect the right of individual workers to decide whether they want to pay that fee and whether they want to join a union. — Marco Rubio

Whether he'll follow some gaudy, hysterical leader who'll promise rashly to fill the void in him, or whether he'll come to an understanding with the millions of his kindred fellow workers under trade-union or revolutionary guidance depends upon the future drift of events in America. But, — Richard Wright

The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money. — Linda Chavez

The AFL-CIO is a structure that divides workers' strength by allowing each union to organize in any industry, then bargain on its own, even when workers share a common employer. — Andy Stern

But children are our future!' Yes, but does that not also mean that we are their past? I don't understand why we're helping them. You don't see union factory workers throwing a benefit for robots. — Stephen Colbert

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

In 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis tried to form a union. The city resisted. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life. — Robert Reich

In my college years, I worked as a union labor organizer. I was just one of the many workers trying to do my part to help the community. — Jimmy Smits

Speaking of myself, I was made to realize long ago that the old trade union was utterly incompetent to deal successfully with the exploiting corporations in this struggle. I was made to see that in craft unionism the capitalist class have it within their power to keep the workers divided, to use one part of them to conquer and crush another part of them. Indeed, I was made to see that the old form of unionism separates the workers and keeps them helpless at the mercy of their masters. — Eugene V. Debs

Two hours a day for two days per week. Four hours. At $7.25 an hour, that gave him a gross income of $29 a week. He is also now a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers International, the union that represents food workers, retail clerks, and farm workers. His monthly dues for the UFCW are $25, all taken out of his first week's check. That makes Owen arguably the most selfless labor activist in America, with 86 percent of his pay going to support his union. — Ron Suskind

Nationalism and socialism as actually lived and applied in the 20th century are the same thing (and in the 18th and 19th century, nationalism was often a force for classical liberalism!). It's all a kind of reactionary tribalism (another "ism" which becomes poisonous quickly as you up the dosage). When you nationalize an industry, you socialize it. When you socialize an industry you nationalize it. Yes, international socialism rejected this formulation. And that's why international socialism failed! People wanted to be Germans or Russians or Italians and they wanted to be socialists. Even the Soviet Union embraced national-socialism (socialism in one country) because that 'workers of the world unite' crap wouldn't fly. After Stalin, no Communist or socialist regime failed to exploit nationalism to one extent or another. — Jonah Goldberg

Now workers should have the right to join unions. But unions should not be forced upon workers. And unions should not have the power to take money our of their members' paychecks to buy the support of politicians that are favored by the union bosses. — Mitt Romney

I came across the Indonesian genocide in 2001, when I found myself making a film in a community of survivors. They were plantation workers, and it turned out they were struggling to organize a union. — Joshua Oppenheimer

My father was a member of the Teamsters Union in California, where he helped to organize better health care for workers. My mother worked for more than 20 years on an assembly line. — Hilda Solis

The workers who harvest our food have been systematically denied the basic rights that are granted to all other American workers. They can be fired for trying to form a union or for attempting to improve their working conditions. They are not eligible for overtime pay, disability, or even unemployment insurance. — Eric Schneiderman

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