Samuel Gompers Quotes

That's the Rebel Girl, That's the Rebel Girl. To the working class she's a precious pearl. She brings courage, pride and joy To the fighting Rebel Boy We've had girls before, but we need some more In the Industrial Workers of the World For it's great to fight for freedom With a Rebel Girl

Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

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?

Only with the tools of production in their own hands could the workers ever hope to control their own lives and receive the fruits of their labor.

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins.

We are with you in this work. Workingmen must form a party of their own, take charge of the government, dispose gilded fraud, and put honest toil in power.

This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity.

In Russia the workers are powerless, kept in spiritual as well as physical bondage. The American workers are free to take up the fight, free to act, to read, to publish, to discuss, to instruct themselves, to combine in unions, to assemble in meeting, to strike. Hence it is only here [America] that the fight for peace can begin…. The [solution] consists in mass-actions of American workers against capitalist power. If they should proceed to wrench the decision on policy from big capital, the most essential step to deter the threat of atomic war would be made

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.

My heart lies with the workers.

The labor movement has lifted more people out of poverty than all the programs in the country.

Each reform, therefore, improving the economical and political situation of the workers proves to be an arm that increases the energy with which the proletarian struggle of classes is fought.

And I think we understand we cannot make social change for all workers until we have enough strength, membership strength, and at the same time having membership strength and only making change for a limited group of workers is not what our country really needs for people that work.

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

The labor question is the same the world over, and laborers of the world should clasp hands for their common wealth.

Solidarity Forever

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.

The Socialist Party emphatically rejects the proposal that in times of war, the workers should suspend their struggle for better conditions.

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

We can also build. It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that.

Again and again it has been said to us, 'Beware how you attempt to attack class interests. The victory won by the worker must be for all.' For me I must say, No! A hundred times, No! I know no class but that of man.

Fellow workers, this is the Continental Congress of the working class. The aims and objects of this organization shall be to put the working class in possession of economic power.

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

It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it.

Today we often take for granted the fact that supporters of The Militant can stand in front of a mine portal and distribute the paper. But this was a right that we along with other miners had to fight for against the coal companies and some conservative-minded workers.