John Shelby Spong Quotes

As we grow richer, the ties that used to bind workers together in a risk-pooling welfare state (first locally, later nationally) have loosened.

Labor is marching toward the goal of industrial democracy and contributing constructively toward a more rational arrangement of our domestic economy.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

Show me a country in which there are no strikes and I'll show you that country is which there is no liberty.

Let him who will, be he economic tyrant or sordid mercenary, pit his strength against this mighty upsurge of human sentiment now being crystallized in the hearts of thirty million workers who clamor for the establishment of industrial democracy and for participation in its tangible fruits. He is a madman of a fool who believes that this river of human sentiment can be damned.

The labor union in enforcing a high scale of wages brings about the distribution of wealth throughout the entire community.

Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the national pie. Labor is fighting for a larger pie.

Whether one has a favorable or unfavorable opinion of unions, their demise is also the demise of countervailing power. A system in which there is no countervailing power is a tyranny in which power is unconstrained and unaccountable.

Collective bargaining, and the fundamental human right, freedom of association, is seen as an anathema to American business, and people just - it doesn't seem to register that there's no universal social safety net that people can touch.

Instead of a universal basic income, we could have a basic income guarantee. Or, as economists prefer to call it, a negative income tax.

I am a fan of the social policies that you find in Europe

What social safety net does is provide a glimmer of hope for what a democratic socialist society might look like. It makes the claim that without social provisions, without a welfare state, without a social contract, society can't survive. We need a foundation for people - economically, politically, and socially - where what the Right considers "entitlements" are really rights.

Labor #‎ Unions are the leading force for #‎ democratization and #‎ progress .

Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth...

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.

I think organized labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth.

I want a society that provides decent jobs for those who can work and decent security for those can't.

You can't be pro-labor and anti-business.

I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.

In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.

In Finland, where 80 percent of workers belong to unions, all employees enjoy at least 30 days paid vacation, and the gap between the rich and poor is far more equitable than in the United States.

Unions are about the collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital.

One of the great things about unions is they're member driven and give us the great ability to both lead and follow at the same time.

The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice.

I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.