John T. Flynn Quotes

If you can peel off a few unions, you can make the Democratic Party irrelevant.

The United Mine Workers and the CIO have paid cash on the barrel for every piece of legislation that we have gotten…

Power? Nine workers out of ten still unorganized, and union dues going to bribe middle class politicians. You call that power?

I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime…. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.

I am a huge believer in organized labor. Period. Full stop.

I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

The labor movement has failed to capture the support of the public at large.

Some say politics means destruction to labor organizations, but the reverse is the fact.

We back Solidarity [the Polish trade union], and bust our unions.

Political activity by unions is not wrong. It's their First Amendment right.

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.

I think it is a wise course for laborers to unite to defend their interests.... I think the employer who declines to deal with organized labor and to recognize it as a proper element in the settlement of wage controversies is behind the times.... Of course, when organized labor permits itself to sympathize with violent methods or undue duress, it is not entitled to our sympathy.

As long as there are big corporations, there will be big unions. The economic power of big business will be matched by the economic power of the big unions.

If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads or a wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the union of my trade. If I disapproved of its policy, I would join in order to fight that policy; if the union leaders were dishonest, I would join in order to put them out. I believe in the union and I believe that all men who are benefited by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their power in the common interests advanced by the union.

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.

If we're all together, we have money, and we start to organize, you're going to see the Teamsters Union start to bloom.

What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves.

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.

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.

We could see the Teamsters coming in from New Jersey, the AFL-CIO from Chicago. You could see all of the people being bused in.

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.

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?

Working people are under the worst attack in 80 years. Never has there been a stronger need for a stronger union movement.

Organized labor, if they're doing a responsible job, is going to organize the pooling of small amounts of money to protect the interests of the people who are not rich.

Why does the great body of workingmen still permit itself to be ruled and exploited by the capitalists? Why are they not in a position to drive the minority of exploiters from power? Because they are an unorganized, undisciplined, individualistic and ignorant mass. The majority is impotent because it consists of a divided crowd of individuals each one of whom wishes to act according to his own impulse, regard his own interests.