Bob Hawke Quotes

I think the business community is smart enough to realise that just having a trade union is not enough. They are smart enough to know they need to be part of a union that has political and financial power.

My government, a government of national unity, will make all necessary structural reforms.

I spent 20 years working for the trade union movement before becoming a Labour MP. I'm proud to have done both jobs.

You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the trade union movement in parliament.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.

The clash between capital and labour, between those seeking to maximise profit and those with only their toil to sell, was the driving force for the creation of the trade unions in the 19th century.

You won't catch Liberal Democrats describing trade unionists as wreckers.

The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle, but an opportunity to change the government of the day.

Our recent 5-year labour agreements, in Canada as well as the United States, are based upon experience, logic and principle rather than on pressure, propaganda and force.

I will use the power of the government of the United States within my control to prevent the labor unions ... from destroying the open shop.

Many of those who helped to lay the foundations of the trade union movement were men who had been through the experience of Socialism and found their way to sounder policies.

There is no other bargaining but collective bargaining.

Liberals don't believe in the ultimate concept of self-reliance, which is why they look to the government for stability.

I was never presented with the details as far as the collective bargaining system is Greece. I am in favor of a normal system without giving the labour minister the right to extend the results to extend the result of the collective bargaining to the whole of the real economy. The government has to make sure that the results will not harm the situation of small and medium enterprises.

Trade unionism is not socialism. It is the capitalism of the proletariat.

It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.

Public unions are the country's foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government.

Government cripples you, then hands you a crutch and says, 'See, if it wasn't for us, you couldn't walk.'

Arthur Scargill is the Labour movements nearest equivalent to a First World War General.

There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time - that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Governments first of all have been able to amass, through the taxation process, large sums of capital which they have redistributed to persons or groups, already large holders of capital, through official subsidies.

I've said consistently that no employer ever really accepts a union. They tolerate the unions. The very minute they can get a pool of unemployment they'll challenge the unions and try to get back what they call managements prerogatives, meaning hire, fire, pay what you want.

There are established processes of consultation between the Government, the parastatals and the trade unions, which have worked in the past. And I don't see any particular reason why they shouldn't work.

there is nothing more American than the trade-union movement.

There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.