There are three bodies no sensible man directly challenges: the Roman Catholic Church, the Brigade of Guards and the National Union of Mineworkers.
Earl of Stockton
Well, I'm not trying to get rid of the unions, but I am saying that they appear to be an antiquated concept in today's economy.
All too often miners, and indeed other trade unionists, underestimate the economic strength they have.
You know you don't see hospital consultants going on strike, and I don't believe that teachers and head teachers should. It's within their rights, it's a civil right, but I think it is wrong in terms of the reputation of the profession.
I think there's not much patience for organized labour, period, public or private sector.
If you rely on a more conventional understanding of the term 'left-wing' as being associated with gradations of socialism in the emancipation of the working class, the Leap Manifesto looks something more along the lines of what the great British socialist and essayist George Orwell was on about in 'The Road to Wigan Pier' in 1937.
Labour is not a commodity.
Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
I was shaped by a pit environment and the Second World War. My playground was on the pit tip at Clay Cross and I grew up with that mining background. My father was a miner and my granddad was a miner, and I would say three out of ten on the street where I was born were working in the pits.
At Leeds the idea of an international labour organization appeared in a trade-union text which also drew attention to the danger to the working classes inherent in the existence of international capitalist competition.
Surely the time was coming when the law, which was the representative of the organized will of the people, would declare that British workers should no longer work for less than they could live upon.
I love that we are one of the least unionized states in the country...We don't have unions in South Carolina because we don't need unions in South Carolina...And we'll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted, and not welcome.
The big-business mergers and the big-labour mergers have the appearance of dinosaurs mating.
Unions did in fact build the middle class. And here's what that did. That built the United States of America as we know it.
A convention was drawn up on June 17, 1925, in which the principle of supervision, as opposed to that of simple propaganda, was recognized, thanks to the efforts of the labour members, of whom I was one.
There's not much more of an honour - to work for, and with, working people.
