Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

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 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.

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

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

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. 'But notwithstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.

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

The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.

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.

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.

Trade unions are a force for good - a force for a more equal society.

This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity.

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

What shall the workers do? Sit idly by and see the vast resources of nature and the human mind be utilized and monopolized for the benefit of the comparative few? No. The laborers must learn to think and act, and soon, too, that only by the power of organization, and common concert of action, can either their manhood be maintained, their rights to life (work to sustain it) be recognized, and liberty and rights secured.

A divided labor movement hurts the prospects of union members and it makes me very angry.

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

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.

The formation of the smallest worker’s organization will for the history writers of the future be more important than the battle of Sadova

The Russian Labor movement is the youngest and the weakest in Europe.

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

In my experience, union leaders are respected by their members.

If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.

The labor movement is people. Our unions have brought millions of men and women together, made them members one of another, and given them common tools for common goals. Their goals are goals for all America - and their enemies are the enemies for progress. The two cannot be separated.