Michael Parenti Quotes

Union busting has become an art form.

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.

Unions and their supporters in Congress claim that when employees vote on whether to unionize, the elections are tainted by employer intimidation. They're wrong.

There is no other bargaining but collective bargaining.

Back in early 1983, my dad was tasked with keeping unions from organizing in his company's distribution centers. His work pulled him away from home for months on end.

We back Solidarity [the Polish trade union], and bust our unions.

T-Mobile U.S.A. is one company that uses fear and intimidation to scare workers away from union representation.

The attack on unions has been far more extreme here [in U.S], and it has been much more successful.

[Companies that specialized in how to destroy unions] don't make it a secret, and they have all sorts of techniques for management to destroy unions.

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.

If there is to be peace in our industrial life let the employer recognize his obligation to his employees - at least to the degree set forth in existing statutes.

When the unions were fighting me 45 years ago, they could never beat me.

I'm not going to stop beating up on the unions.

Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs - hadn't been done for a long time, and it's illegal in most countries - in the air controller strike.

Unions inherently create an 'us versus them' dynamic that makes winning against a company's management the top goal, not serving customers, innovating, or in the case of education, teaching kids.

Make no mistake about it! There is an organized movement against organized labor and it's called the Bush Administration.

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?

The denial by employers of the right of employees to organize and the refusal by employers to accept the procedure of collective bargaining lead to strikes and other forms of industrial strife or unrest, which have the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce.

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.

Labor Unions are revolutionary and anarchistic and a menace to the entire social and industrial system of the United States.

Something may be done under Federal authority to prevent the disturbances which so often arise from disputes between employers and the employed.

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.

The methods by which a trade union can alone act are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.

Labor and capital may be partners in theory, but they are enemies in fact.