Richard Ojeda Quotes

I stand with the working-class citizens.

There can be no distress, there can be no hard times, when labor is well paid. The man who raises his hand against the progress of the workingman raises his hand against prosperity.

The fight for the liberation of the working class from its present position, which is beneath a free people, is not a fight for new class privileges and prerogatives but for equal rights and equal obligations for all and for the abolition of class rule

As we say we fight for working people, we have to make sure our policies reflect that.

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

I am one of those men who believes that the best workingman ought to have the best pay.

I will only stop defending the rights of workers when I die.

Take care of your working-class citizens, and your working-class citizens will take care of you.

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

Legislation has been and is still directed towards the protection of wealth, rather than towards the far more important interests of labor on which everything of value to mankind depends.

And I think we understand we cannot make social change for all workers until we have enough strength, membership strength, and at the same time having membership strength and only making change for a limited group of workers is not what our country really needs for people that work.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

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.

It means that the men who hold the means of life control our lives, and, because we workingmen have tried to get some measure of justice, some measure of betterment, they deny the right of the human being to associate with his fellow.

Workers have kept faith in American institutions. Most of the conflicts, which have occurred have been when labor's right to live has been challenged and denied.

To fulfill the promise of economic opportunity, we must remain true to the principle that collective bargaining is a cornerstone of a free society and indispensable to a strong middle class.

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?

I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one.

To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on Saturday night, Socialism does not mean much more than better wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you about.

I am always on the side of labor when there is any compromise to be made.

What the labor movement did in this country is to make sure that capitalism worked.

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

We must remember that the real problem is not how to produce some improvement in the condition of the working man— for that has to a certain extent been attained already— but how to secure his complete material independence.

Workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe, or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear, and to be housed withal — to say nothing of their share of the other social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as education and artistic gratification.

The labor movement is our brother's keeper! The labor movement is our sister's keeper!