Labor Struggles Quotes

I have a visceral response to a memory of working-class life.

The toilers have awakened to the new found power of organized effort.

It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners.

The late development of mass industrial organization in the United States has both stimulated and retarded the political development of the American working class.

The labor movement has failed to capture the support of the public at large.

My parents had been involved in the labor movement; if we'd grown up in the city, we would have been red-diaper babies.

The Russian Labor movement is the youngest and the weakest in Europe.

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.

Unquestionably unions and their leaders are not always wise and fair any more than any other human beings.

No strike could ever be won with a Communist at its head since the employers would make victory impossible.

My greatest accomplishment so far is to keep selling enough that I never want for the labor that sustains my Presbyterian soul.

You can't co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class.

I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.

I came across the Indonesian genocide in 2001, when I found myself making a film in a community of survivors. They were plantation workers, and it turned out they were struggling to organize a union.

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

Labor organizations are like other organizations, like organizations of capitalists; sometimes they act very well and sometimes they act badly. We should consistently favor them when they act well, and as fearlessly oppose them when they act badly.

We were no experts in the field of labor organization, but we had something in common with our fellow workers -- we were all poor -- we were all overworked -- we were all victims of the 84 hour week. In fact, we were all so low down on the economic and social ladder that we had nowhere to go but up

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. 'But notwithstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.

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

I think you'll see if you look at 'Up', we've focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise.

Americans are right to believe the American Dream is fading. But that dream only became a possibility for white men as a result of the labor struggles and reforms of the New Deal, and it began to extend to minorities and women only after the civil rights and women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is to be an employer.

Do not let [“Big”] Bill Hayward and the Industrial Workers of the World terrorize President, Congress, Judge and Juries.

Out of the agony and travail of economic America the Committee for Industrial Organization was born.