Worker Autonomy Quotes

I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails under which laborers can strike when they want to...I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to and wish it might prevail everywhere.

Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth because they take away a man's independence.

Doing for people what they can and ought to do for themselves is a dangerous experiment …. The welfare of the workers depends on their own initiative.

Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

Do not make the mistake...of thinking that a worker is a slave and that he holds his job by his employer's permission. He does not hold it by permission - but by contract, that is, by a voluntary mutual agreement. A worker can quit his job; a slave cannot.

Giving them [workers] their own houses chain them once again to the soil and you break their power of resistance to the wage cutting of the factory owners.

Management don't really have any problem at all with firing people. It's a powerful idea that, If I'm not happy, I'll quit. I'll try something else!

The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.

Now workers should have the right to join unions. But unions should not be forced upon workers. And unions should not have the power to take money our of their members' paychecks to buy the support of politicians that are favored by the union bosses.

The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations.

There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. That is his right. It is his legal right, no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right, and no one can or dare question his exercise of that legal right.

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.

The reality is that no one can be forced to join a union against their will, and a union cannot take action against those who decide not to join their union.

To be free, the workers must have choice. To have choice they must retain in their own hands the right to determine under what conditions they will work.

The employer class is less indispensable in the modern organization of industries because the laboring men themselves possess sufficient intelligence to organize into co-operative relation and enjoy the entire benefits of their own labor.

The powers that technology and independent contracting give to workers enables them to take greater control of their careers to preserve work-life balance.

Labor also wants shorter hours and a say in how work shall be done.

Why should workers agree to be slaves in a basically authoritarian structure? They should have control over it themselves. Why shouldn't communities have a dominant voice in running the institutions that affect their lives?

It does not follow from the separation of planning and doing in the analysis of work that the planner and the doer should be two different people. It does not follow that the industrial world should be divided into two classes of people: a few who decide what is to be done, design the job, set the pace, rhythm and motions, and order others about; and the many who do what and as they are told.

It is essential that the worker in industry should have the status of an individual and not a mere cog in a soulless machine.

Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them..'If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying- pan, you can take a walk into the fire.

But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies, consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government?

Union membership should not be a condition for employment, and workers should have the freedom to exercise their right to determine how their hard-earned money is spent.

I am glad to see a system of labor ... under which laborers can strike when they want to.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.