Daniel Barenboim Quotes

Ordinary people who have lots of good ideas want more than a suggestion box, and they need a union to represent that thinking.

What labor is demanding all over the world today is not a few material things like more dollars and fewer hours of work, but the right to a voice in the conduct of industry.

Ordinary people in such positions - working at firms, companies, or chains - have the absolute right to have their voice in the public square.

There's not democracy in the workplace. I mean, through most of our daily lives, the idea of democracy is fairly nonexistent. And I think things work better when the people who have to work with whatever it is we're working with have a say in how it's working.

I even believe in helping an employer function more productively. For then, we will have a claim to higher wages, shorter hours, and greater participation in the benefits of running a smooth industrial machine.

The supermarket chain Whole Foods has quite a radical employee empowerment program, where employees get to decide whether another employee can work in their team or not. If they think this person's a slacker, doesn't have good ideas, they can vote and say, no, we don't want this person to be working with us on the vegetable aisle.

Labor also wants shorter hours and a say in how work shall be done.

There is nothing that says unions have a God-given right to be there. We have to work at it and make ourselves relevant to every section of the workforce.

Private unions, such as the UAW, is a choice between employees and employers. If that is what they want, then who am I to say you can't have it?

It is essential that the worker in industry should have the status of an individual and not a mere cog in a soulless machine.

There is no other bargaining but collective bargaining.

There is no way whereby our labor movement may be assured sustained progress in determining its policies and its plans other than sincere democratic deliberation until a unanimous decision is reached. This may seem a cumbrous, slow method to the impatient, but the impatient are more concerned for immediate triumph than for the education of constructive development.

The right to organize is a fundamental right for American workers.

Union membership should not be a condition for employment, and workers should have the freedom to exercise their right to determine how their hard-earned money is spent.

Stop demonizing American workers who don't belong to unions who are happy in their jobs.

Unions continue to be important for raising the standard of living for working Americans, whether or not they happen to be in a union.

What we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions... These so-called "right to work" laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.

The industrial world would be a more peaceful place if workers were called in as collaborators in the process of establishing standards and defining shop practices, matters which surely affect their interests and well-being fully as much as they affect those of employers and consumers.

I'm not going to ask for anything unless the workers want it. If they want it, they'll ask for it.

I would have worked with the devil himself if he'd been for the six hour day and worker control of the hiring hall.

Workers should have a right to sit across from management to collectively bargain about their work conditions, their wages, and the future direction of the company. To me, that's just a humane thing to do. It is unacceptable in the 21st century to have companies not want to do that with their employees and create a great work environment.

Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares...or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination.

Few concepts are as basic as the role of workers in our economic structure and their participation in equity ownership.

We need to support new organizing strategies for employees who too often have never had the benefit of collective bargaining, and we have to resist the assault on workers' rights.

The fastest way to disengage an employee is to tell him his work is meaningful only because of the paycheck.