Norman Tebbit Quotes

The strongest form of fight against the capitalist class is the strike. Strikes are necessary, ever again, against the capitalists’ tendency to increase their profits by lowering wages and increase the hours or the intensity of work.

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

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.

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

I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.

Unions are about the collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital.

I'm a lifelong believer in trade unionism.

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

Trade unionism is not a discovery or a formula. It grew and evolved slowly out of the needs of human experience.

The labor question is the same the world over, and laborers of the world should clasp hands for their common wealth.

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

Trade unionism means the enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.

Duty of the Catholic Worker to Join Organized Labor

It is essential that there be organization of labor…. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

The weapon of political action. That is going to be the main fighting weapon of all labor, international as well as national, if we are going to do those things that we are in business to do as a labor union

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

My heart lies with the workers.

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

Do not let [“Big”] Bill Hayward and the Industrial Workers of the World terrorize President, Congress, Judge and Juries.

We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession.

I'm not anti-union.

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.

I fight like a daggone wild man for labor unions.

It was a way to try and shut down what the unions were negotiating for, like better hours and pay. [Dalton] Trumbo and his friends joined the Communists mostly for these reasons.