Bob Hawke Quotes

The Labor Department's Hall of Honor recognizes men and women - like Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller and the Workers of the Memphis Sanitation Strike - who have made invaluable contributions to the welfare of American workers.

The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions.

I don't expect to get a standing ovation from businessmen when I call for higher wages.

I don't conduct myself like a rock 'n' roll star in my day-to-day living. Am I a celebrity? Yes. Do people recognize me on the street? Yes, they do. But at the same time, it's not a media center out here. People get used to you.

Out of labor's struggle in Arizona came better conditions for the workers, who must everywhere, at all times, under advantage and disadvantage work out their own salvation.

You know, rock stardom... I have a hard time discussing that because I don't really accept it. It's not really that tangible. What's really bizarre is how it's used as a thing - you know, 'He's the rock star of politics,' 'He's the rock star of quarterbacks' - like it's the greatest thing in the world.

I believe that the Right to Work issue is a perfectly appropriate one for Indiana to look at.

We have tried voluntary codes and we have tried free markets, but they have not worked, so we need to try something else. Legislation is not a panacea for all the inequalities in the workplace, but it will go a long way towards stopping them. Effective employment legislation is needed

The modern labor movement that began around the mid-19th century has given us many of the basic working rights that we now take for granted.

Whether one has a favorable or unfavorable opinion of unions, their demise is also the demise of countervailing power. A system in which there is no countervailing power is a tyranny in which power is unconstrained and unaccountable.

I will stand with unions wholeheartedly, and that's the problem - the Democratic Party wants to say that, but their actions do not mirror that.

As we celebrate Labor Day, we honor the men and women who fought tirelessly for workers' rights, which are so critical to our strong and successful labor force.

Employment is a contract between an employer and an employee. Thus, laws prohibiting discriminatory pay are an infringement on private contracts.

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.

The number of illegal firings tripled during the [Ronald] Reagan years. It was at that time that you started getting these companies that specialized in how to destroy unions.

Next year I hope to get a stalker or two because I don't believe you've arrived until you get a stalker.

Fame, they tell you, is air; but without air there is no life for any; without fame there is none for the best.

I've never bashed a union in my life.

Starting with [Ronald] Regan it became quite open, the attack on unions. It wasn't the Pinkertons anymore, but it was just not applying the laws.

I don't think of myself as a very famous person, but the modicum of celebrity that I've had has not been a positive experience for me at all.

Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future.

Money will buy money's worth; but the thing men call fame, what is it?

All I want is to be more famous than anything or anyone.

The union miner cannot agree to the acceptance of a wage principle which will permit his annual earnings and his living standards to be determined by the hungriest unfortunates whom the non-union operators can employ.

If we don't have workers organized into labor unions, we're in great peril of losing our democracy.