Worker Power Quotes

If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.

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

Neither the common law nor the Fourteenth Amendment confers the absolute right to strike.

For the first time we are facing the prospect of seeing legislation introduced which denies the right of trade unionists to come to the assistance of other unionists and denies the right of trade unionists to seek the support of others in their disputes. There is only one response. Faced with this legislation we should say we will defy the law. It is the only action we can take and it is the only response this movement can give. If there is an attempt to use this legislation then you defy it not as an individual union but as a movement.

Governor Scott Walker didn't know who he was messing with when he picked a fight with the hard-working union folks of Wisconsin. He must have forgotten that Wisconsin is the Badger State. And badgers are scrappy little creatures. We may look cute, warm and fuzzy, but we have a fighting spirit.

Implicit in the stare of those eyes, the power of those knobbly hands, was labor's historic threat of violence against capital.

I think the greedy corporate owners have to be confronted with the fact that they are ignoring their most powerful resource - their workers.

The strongest form of fight against the capitalist class is the strike. Strikes are necessary, ever again, against the capitalists’ tendency to increase their profits by lowering wages and increase the hours or the intensity of work.

Today we are united, strong and on the move. Today we have a strong strike fund. Today we have the resources to run large-scale organizing campaigns against global employers. Today we have $100 million in the bank.

If we're all together, we have money, and we start to organize, you're going to see the Teamsters Union start to bloom.

When the unions were fighting me 45 years ago, they could never beat me.

To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that.

No strike is a loss or failure to the workers, even if the point sought is not gained for the time being. If naught else they teach the capitalists that they are expensive luxuries.

The workers of America have power enough to topple the structure of capitalism at home and to lift the whole world with them when they rise.

Your strike will not win. You cannot be allowed to succeed.

It is for the benefit of them and to the public that laborers should unite in their common interest and for lawful purposes. If they stand together, they are often able, all of them, to command better prices for their labor than when dealing singly with rich employers …