Quotes about Union Demands

Fulton J. Sheen

Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms.

A. J. Cook

Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day.

Andrew Cuomo

I respect the state workers and I respect their unions, but we simply can't afford to pay benefits and pensions that are out of line with economic reality.

Robert Reich

By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie.

Eleanor Roosevelt

… employers, many of whom would like to be fair, are in a competitive business and they cannot afford to meet the demands of the union unless everyone in their line of business is forced to do so too

This is one of the classic labor-management problems. It can be solved by legislating minimum wages, having very strong labor unions, that can pressure all the employers of an industry at once, or to have industrial unions as they do in Germany.

Lee Iacocca

As long as Detroit [the auto companies] was making money, it was always easy for us to accept union demands and recoup them later in the form of price increases. The alternative was to take a strike and risk ruining the company.

The practice worked fine in the Automobile industry, until there was intense competition from imported cars, and price increases were not easy to sustain and keep market share at the same time. When the automobile executives made some bad decisions, there was great conflict with the Unions who argued that it was the management that made the big mistakes and therefore the workers should not have to reduce their remuneration, and the automobile companies were caught in a death spiral where there costs were too high for the cars they made, the quality had slipped in an effort to save costs, and they did not make the smaller, low gas mileage cars that were in demand. The industry would have failed completely had it not been for the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations working together to bail out the American auto companies to the distress of many conservative ideologues in and out of Congress. See {637913} for a classic right wing ideological response to bailouts earlier.

Chris Christie

I am not going to make any commitments to the teachers union to do anything until they do something that's other than in their own self- interest. And everything they have done so far is in their self-interests, and that's it.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I am writing a line on this subject to the head of the union. In war time it is considered essential to play "The Star Spangled Banner," but to employ musicians for this purpose and this purpose only, seems to be rather difficult. They certainly could not make a living wage on a short engagement of this kind. In this particular case, the theatre was being picketed because it was using a record instead of employing musicians.

What makes this quotation interesting is the fact that Mrs. Roosevelt was a strong supporter of labor unions, but she didn’t hesitate to write to union officials when a union was making absurd and unfair demands. And she also wrote about it in her column. There were some union officials who wanted her just to send a private letter, but Mrs. Roosevelt used her column not only to inform the public of her views on matters but to educate them about the complexities of many issues.

Arthur James Cook

Not a penny off the pay. Not a minute on the day.

Diego Simeone

Strikers are streaky creatures.

Peter Drucker

Economic disputes are rarely the real cause of a strike. We do not have a strike because negotiations break down; negotiations break down because the situation is a strike situation.

Rose Schneiderman

Our people were very restive, saying that they could not sit under that notice, and that if the National Board did not call them out soon they would go out of themselves.

Michelle Malkin

Instead of putting Americans to work, the Teamsters have been busy yanking members off projects and idling construction projects from California to Indiana to New York in order to shake down employers.

Union Demands Quotes