Cesar Chavez Quotes

My parents were both union members, and I grew up hearing how important it was to empower workers and have fair labor practices.

There's not democracy in the workplace. I mean, through most of our daily lives, the idea of democracy is fairly nonexistent. And I think things work better when the people who have to work with whatever it is we're working with have a say in how it's working.

Any union that can't accept workers choosing their own representatives through universal franchise is finished.

One of the great things about unions is they're member driven and give us the great ability to both lead and follow at the same time.

Ordinary people who have lots of good ideas want more than a suggestion box, and they need a union to represent that thinking.

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.

It is essential that the worker in industry should have the status of an individual and not a mere cog in a soulless machine.

I am glad to see a system of labor ... under which laborers can strike when they want to.

There is too much employer-employee relationship in America. I wish the musicians would feel that many decisions have to do with them and not delegate everything to management or to the board or to the committee. This is why you get a sense of pride in some of the European orchestras: because they are part of the decision-making.

Now workers should have the right to join unions. But unions should not be forced upon workers. And unions should not have the power to take money our of their members' paychecks to buy the support of politicians that are favored by the union bosses.

Union membership should not be a condition for employment, and workers should have the freedom to exercise their right to determine how their hard-earned money is spent.

What we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions... These so-called "right to work" laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.

We need to support new organizing strategies for employees who too often have never had the benefit of collective bargaining, and we have to resist the assault on workers' rights.

It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.

Many people feel that unions aren't militant enough for them and don't do anything.

Many people have mixed views about unions, but unions used to give people some measure of control at work. They gave them a social life and political representation in Washington, which doesn't really exist anymore.

T-Mobile U.S.A. is one company that uses fear and intimidation to scare workers away from union representation.

Collective bargaining, and the fundamental human right, freedom of association, is seen as an anathema to American business, and people just - it doesn't seem to register that there's no universal social safety net that people can touch.

The workers who get hurt by corner-cutting often do not realize they are being wronged. Even when they do, they do not have the support and resources to fight back. Without a union to stand behind them, these workers are forced to stay in bad jobs, or face no job at all.

Where laws recognize rights to collective bargaining, the truth is that employee rights to negotiate with employers are denied in many countries.

South Carolina is a 'right to work' state - a misnomer of a phrase, as the laws limits union representation of workers. It does does not guarantee workers a job or fair wages and conditions.

If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.

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.

I love that we are one of the least unionized states in the country...We don't have unions in South Carolina because we don't need unions in South Carolina...And we'll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted, and not welcome.