Quotes About Unions

The change that Trump is likely to bring will be harmful or worse, but it is understandable that the consequences are not clear to isolated people in an atomized society lacking the kinds of associations (like unions) that can educate and organize.

By now, less than 7 percent of private sector workers have unions, and it's not because workers don't want unions—polls show that, overwhelmingly, they want to unionize—but they can't.

The debt is being cynically exploited by the far right, with collusion of the Democrat establishment, to undermine what remains of social programs, public education, unions, and, in general, remaining barriers to corporate tyranny.

The rise of multinational corporations that know neither patriotism nor morality but only self-interest, has made accountability almost non-existent. At virtually every level, I discern a demand by business for docile government and unrestrained corporate individualism. Where industry once yearned for subservient unions, it now wants no unions at all.

A major reason for the concentrated, almost fanatic attack on unions and organized labor is they are a democratizing force. They provide a barrier that defends workers' rights, but also popular rights generally. That interferes with the prerogatives and power of those who own and manage the society.

The "Antifa" (antifascist) groups throughout Germany hastily organized local unions known as Betriebsrats (works councils) that took over management of hundreds of companies, particularly the larger factories. These committees then usually drove out the old boards of directors, Nazi-era personnel managers, Nazi Labor Front activists, and Gestapo informers.

And on the other side of the ledger, unions like the Teamsters often employed their own muscle, their own reigns of terror, including bombings, arsons, beatings, and murders. The warfare and violence were not just between labor and management. It was often between rival unions vying for the same membership. Sadly, it was often violence directed at rank-and-file union members who urged democratic reform of their unions. The

These two unions [of Egypt], the earliest great national organizations of men in history, brought before the minds of men an imposing fabric of the state which at length made a profound impression on religion. The forms of the state began to pass over into the world of the gods, and an important god would be called a king.

I sometimes think that unions don't understand that we live in a free society, and people have the right to not select union representation if they don't want it.

That's what unions do. They can get money, they can get support, they can get manpower.

I make a lot of money. I can take a pay cut. All my friends are taking pay cuts that are in the unions, that are - that are farming in Alabama or whatever it is. I can surely take a pay cut, too, not cutting down my show or - or the people that work for me, I can take a pay cut.

My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.

If I were the president of the United States, I would make unions illegal. They no longer serve a functional purpose in democracy, in my view.

They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics, to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership, we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars over 30 years and saved retirees their pensions. We did it.

Lawmakers in both political parties have often acceded to unions' requests to avoid political confrontations or to curry favor. They have pushed difficult choices into the future.

I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative.

People have to be reminded that unions played a very historic role in our economy.

Unions sustained and fed the middle class. It's no coincidence that as union membership has continued to dwindle, so have the fortunes of the middle class.

The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat.

We - again, the, the, the, the bastardization and the demonization over the last few years of teachers and of unions and of collective bargaining, that is not the answer.

My problem with unions is they breed mediocrity.

The U.S. has done a great job improving productivity. We're making a lot more steel in Dearborn with fewer people. The unions have accepted much better work rules.

Public employee unions are hardly the only group involved in bare-knuckles politics. Businesses lobby fiercely, and executives make hefty campaign donations.

There was segregated unions, which was a real problem for me because - especially as I was working in the recording scene, I had flack from the white union for hiring black musicians. I had flack from the black musician by hiring white musicians.