John Mackey Quotes

I think someone in the union has the right to a private vote, and that's why I'm anti-card check. I grew up in a union family. My grandfather was a coal miner; he was in the union.

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

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

The trade union, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty.

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

I fight like a daggone wild man for labor unions.

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 came from a family where joining a union was the expected thing to do. I've always believed that the relationship between an employer and an individual worker is fundamentally unequal.

By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie.

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

The unions may continue to decline, but if they do, it'll be their fault.

Every individual should have both the right to join a union and the right to not join a union should they so choose. It's about basic human freedom.

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.

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

The denial by employers of the right of employees to organize and the refusal by employers to accept the procedure of collective bargaining lead to strikes and other forms of industrial strife or unrest, which have the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce.

Republicans are always much more supportive of unions in Poland than they are of unions in the United States.

After contract negotiations and organizing, playing an active role in the political process is one of a union's most important functions. Gains won at the bargaining table or through sacrifice on the picketline can be wiped out by politicians on the state or federal level.

Labor cannot on any terms surrender the right to strike.

The task is before us. We have a labor movement that is completely discouraged and demoralized. We have an organized labor movement that is unable on any front to put up an effective struggle against the drive of destruction organized by the masters….the labor unions of America are being broken up because there is not sufficient unified understanding, because there is not sufficient leadership to save them.

The only way a workingman can get anything is by collective bargaining, and by saying "If you don't give us a raise, not only will I quit but we will all quit and tie up your business

Many of those who helped to lay the foundations of the trade union movement were men who had been through the experience of Socialism and found their way to sounder policies.

The methods by which a trade union can alone act are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.

The strike is the weapon of the industrial jungle.

The history of all countries shows that, by its own efforts, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness—that is, the realization of the need of getting together in unions in order to fight employers and to demand from the government the passing of laws necessary for the workers.

There is no other bargaining but collective bargaining.