Harry Bridges Quotes

I've been reading a lot about Silicon Valley history recently and was struck by just how core the lack of unions has been to the American tech industry's evolution. It's enabled the constant creative destruction that keeps Silicon Valley relevant and thriving in a rapidly changing world.

If you can peel off a few unions, you can make the Democratic Party irrelevant.

Without union, our independence and liberty would never have been achieved; without union they never can be maintained.

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

The Labor Community is carrying on … a very significant and instructive struggle.

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.

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 toilers have awakened to the new found power of organized effort.

To get organized labor to realize that we are entering the 21st century is a very difficult job.

Duty of the Catholic Worker to Join Organized Labor

We are the only industrial democracy that does not have one political party that is labor based.

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

We need unions to make sure that working people have a legitimate and consistent voice.

I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime…. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.

There are about 8 million negroes in the United States, and, my friends, I not only have not the power to put the negro out of the labor movement, but I would not, even if I did have the power. Why should I do such a thing? I would have nothing to gain, but the movement would have much to lose. Under our policies and principles we seek to build up the labor movement, instead of injuring it, and we want all the negroes we can possibly get who will join hands with organized labor.

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.

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

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.

There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trade Unions.

Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth...

If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads or a wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the union of my trade. If I disapproved of its policy, I would join in order to fight that policy; if the union leaders were dishonest, I would join in order to put them out. I believe in the union and I believe that all men who are benefited by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their power in the common interests advanced by the union.

The road to social justice for the farm worker is the road of unionization. Our cause, our strike against table grapes and our international boycott are all founded upon our deep conviction that the form of collective self-help, which is unionization, holds far more hope for the farm worker than any other single approach, whether public or private. This conviction is what brings spirit, high hope and optimism to everything we do.

Labor #‎ Unions are the leading force for #‎ democratization and #‎ progress .

The way we have been playing, I might tell my players not to cross the picket line (umpire strike of 1979).

Why should the railroad employees be parceled out among a score of different organizations? They are all employed in the same service. Their interests are mutual. They ought to be able to act together as one. But they divide according to craft and calling, and if you were to propose today to unite them that they might actually do something to advance their collective and individual interests as workers, you would be opposed by every grand officer of these organizations.