George F. Baer Quotes

The Lincoln of Labor

The number of men out on strike exceeds that of any other industrial contest in the history of our country.

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.

Rather than negotiate with the teachers’ unions and the trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to break them.

No better strike leader than John N. Mitchell has ever emerged in any time of industrial strife.

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.

While the men of the steel industry were going through blood and gas in defense of their rights and their homes and their families, elsewhere on the far-flung C.I.O. front the hosts of labor were advancing and intelligent and permanent progress was being made.

When the unions were fighting me 45 years ago, they could never beat me.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

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

The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions.

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

Instead of focusing on attacking unions and the labor movement, we need to find ways to strengthen and empower workers so we can put more money in the pockets of middle class families.

Before there were unions, there was no middle class.

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

We've got to keep an eye on the battle that we face - a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. And there's only one way to beat and win that war - the one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.

I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

I was an organizer in the Food, Agricultural and Tobacco Workers Union down in North Carolina.

So May 4th in the labor movement has always been an important date.

I sometimes think that unions don't understand that we live in a free society, and people have the right to not select union representation if they don't want it.

I'm prepared to fight as hard as I can against unions entering the University on behalf of our students.

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent.

And the success of the union movement, historically, has always been to benefit all working men and women - not just people who belong to the union.

Everything is produced by the workers, and the minute they try to get something by their unions they meet all the opposition that can be mustered by those who now get what they produce.