William Kunstler Quotes

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

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.

I think you'll see if you look at 'Up', we've focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise.

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

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

The labor movement has failed to capture the support of the public at large.

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.

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

Mitchell is only a common coal miner who has worked with his hands for 15 years, and is now a labor agitator. Any negotiations with him would unduly recognize a mere rabble-rouser..

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

In my college years, I worked as a union labor organizer. I was just one of the many workers trying to do my part to help the community.

Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.

Having spent a number of my younger years with trade-union parents attending NUT annual conferences, I feel comfortable with an agenda in my hand and a procedural format for debate.

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?

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.

Working people are under the worst attack in 80 years. Never has there been a stronger need for a stronger union movement.

We must have more union members in this country to fight the political and business forces that are undermining workers in this country. The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach by planning to throw even more money at politicians.