Cesar Chavez Quotes

Only with the tools of production in their own hands could the workers ever hope to control their own lives and receive the fruits of their labor.

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?

When the businessmen of the country were demanding the right to organize themselves adequately to promote their legitimate interests; when the farmers were demanding legislation which would give them opportunities and incentives to organize themselves for a common advance, it was natural that the workers should seek and obtain a statutory declaration of their constitutional right to organize themselves for collective bargaining.

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.

The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America.

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.

When [Steven Lerner] says that unions and so forth are "dead," he's talking about clout. He's talking about power. But "community organizations," the ACORN types, these are the groups that can successfully organize a strike - a strike meaning people just stop paying back on their loans.

The labor movement has a great role to play in our country today.

With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed.

And I think we understand we cannot make social change for all workers until we have enough strength, membership strength, and at the same time having membership strength and only making change for a limited group of workers is not what our country really needs for people that work.

What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves.

Out of the agony and travail of economic America the Committee for Industrial Organization was born.

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

Labor organizations are like other organizations, like organizations of capitalists; sometimes they act very well and sometimes they act badly. We should consistently favor them when they act well, and as fearlessly oppose them when they act badly.

In Russia the workers are powerless, kept in spiritual as well as physical bondage. The American workers are free to take up the fight, free to act, to read, to publish, to discuss, to instruct themselves, to combine in unions, to assemble in meeting, to strike. Hence it is only here [America] that the fight for peace can begin…. The [solution] consists in mass-actions of American workers against capitalist power. If they should proceed to wrench the decision on policy from big capital, the most essential step to deter the threat of atomic war would be made

The union in many cases is reduced to the level of a facilitator, an agent or a "party" in negotiations. As such, how can it be seen by its members to be an organized and dedicated instrument relentlessly pursuing their aspirations and resolutely protecting their wages, conditions and standards?

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.

Heed this cry that comes from the hearts of men. Organize the Unorganized.

It is gratifying that societies of this kind [labor unions], composed either of workers alone or of workers and employers together, are being formed everywhere, and it is truly to be desired that they grow in number and in active vigor.

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

The labor union in enforcing a high scale of wages brings about the distribution of wealth throughout the entire community.

To improve the standard of living for working folks, we have to raise the minimum wage and empower workers to fight for their interests in an economic and political system that's stacked against them.

The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.

When you have powerful unions, you have a working class that is politicized.

We shall strike. We shall organize boycotts. We shall demonstrate and have political campaigns. We shall pursue the revolution we have proposed. We are sons and daughters of the farm workers' revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking bread and justice.