John Sweeney Quotes

The labor movement has lifted more people out of poverty than all the programs in the country.

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.

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.

Trade unions are a force for good - a force for a more equal society.

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?

Before there were unions, there was no middle class.

I've made a lifetime commitment to the union movement and to public education.

I am on the side of the working person across the country.

Unions have been the best anti-poverty program that actually worked and did not cost the government a dime. But as unions grow smaller- not stronger- our ability to act as an economic mechanism to distribute the gains of our work and raise all workers' wages and benefits up is disappearing.

The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.

The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America.

...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.

The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do.

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

Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor's strong, rough hands.

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.

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.

Only with the tools of production in their own hands could the workers ever hope to control their own lives and receive the fruits of their labor.

Starting that union was something I believed in very strongly.

When I saw Arnold say that he didn't need a union, because people in his position don't need it, I thought, this is a very naive way to present yourself. It's also kinda dumb about making movies. It doesn't realize how the union movement even helps the star.

Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.

Unions are about the collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital.

The real solution is to improve the incomes of the poor and provide their children with decent education.

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

This is true only because the purposes and objectives of the Committee for Industrial Organization find economic, social, political and moral justification in the hearts of the millions who are its members and the millions more who support it.