William Goodling Quotes

The New Deal Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act which granted unrestricted sovereign power to the barons of union labor.

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

The strike of the miners in Arizona was one of the most remarkable strikes in the history of the American labor movement. Its peaceful character, its successful outcome, were due to that most remarkable character, Governor Hunt.

I would say the issue for the labor movement in the United States is not structural... there is no correlation between the success of workers and how the labor movement is structured.

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

We are the only industrial democracy that does not have one political party that is labor based.

Many people have mixed views about unions, but unions used to give people some measure of control at work. They gave them a social life and political representation in Washington, which doesn't really exist anymore.

If you don't have collective agreements between unions and employers, governments have to legislate more.

All the legislation ever secured for the ventilation or safety of mines, factory or workshop is the result of the efforts of organized labor?

After contract negotiations and organizing, playing an active role in the political process is one of a union's most important functions. Gains won at the bargaining table or through sacrifice on the picketline can be wiped out by politicians on the state or federal level.

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.

The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions.

When wage controls and other legal restrictions on Canadian workers of the government's only answer to that country's deepening economic problems, the labor movement's response has to be fundamentally political.

Some say politics means destruction to labor organizations, but the reverse is the fact.

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.

Duty of the Catholic Worker to Join Organized Labor

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

We need unions to make sure that working people have a legitimate and consistent voice.

I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime…. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.

No better strike leader than John N. Mitchell has ever emerged in any time of industrial strife.

The decline of the trade union is to some extent inevitable and irreversible.

I have no use for those- regardless of their political party- who hold some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass.

[Ronald] Reagan bitterly hated unions and wanted them destroyed. This began with the air controllers' strike and went on from there.

As long as there are big corporations, there will be big unions. The economic power of big business will be matched by the economic power of the big unions.

The number of illegal firings tripled during the [Ronald] Reagan years. It was at that time that you started getting these companies that specialized in how to destroy unions.