Cesar Chavez Quotes

I'm a lifelong believer in trade unionism.

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

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

Trade unionism means the enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.

Duty of the Catholic Worker to Join Organized Labor

If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor.

The labor movement has a great role to play in our country today.

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.

The dissolution of the trade unions was in the air then.

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.

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

I will never apologize for standing up for my fellow Teamsters and all American workers.

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

Trade unions are a force for good - a force for a more equal society.

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

Trade unionism is not a discovery or a formula. It grew and evolved slowly out of the needs of human experience.

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 trade union, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty.

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.

The number of men out on strike exceeds that of any other industrial contest in the history of our country.

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.

In truth, also, however the matter may be disguised, the combinations among workmen to obtain higher wages, which are now so general and so much complained of, are practical attacks on the claims of capital…. On the side of the labourers there is physical strength, for they are more numerous than their opponents. They are also fast losing that reverence for their opponents which was and is the source of their power, and they are daily acquiring a moral strength which results from a common interest and a close and intimate union …

The weapon of political action. That is going to be the main fighting weapon of all labor, international as well as national, if we are going to do those things that we are in business to do as a labor union