There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.
President Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865)
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 and wish it might prevail everywhere.
Abraham Lincoln, 1860
If a man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar!
President Abraham Lincoln
Employers and employees alike have learned that in union there is strength, that a coordination of individual effort means an elimination of waste, a bettering of living conditions, and is in fact, the father of prosperity.
Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-N.Y., 1929-1932), in address before the New York Women's Trade Union League, 6/8/1929
The rights of employees freely to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining should be fully protected.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, message to Congress, 2/2/1935
It is now beyond partisan controversy that it is a fundamental individual right of a worker to associate himself with other workers and to bargain collectively with his employer.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, address in San Diego, 10/2/1935
If I were a worker in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is time that all Americans realized that the place of labor is side by side with the businessman and with the farmer, and not one-degree lower.
President Harry S. Truman (1945-1953), 1948
The right to join a union of one's choice is unquestioned today and is sanctioned and protected by law.
President Harry S. Truman
Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.
President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961), general and Allied Supreme Commander in World War II
Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor-those who cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized-do a disservice to the cause of democracy.
President John F. Kennedy
Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
President John F. Kennedy, 1962
The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all Americans.
President John F. Kennedy
Every advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another-came with the support and leadership of American Labor.
President Jimmy Carter, 1980
The history of America has been largely created by the deeds of its working people and their organizations. Nor has this contribution been confined to raising wages and bettering work conditions; it has been fundamental to almost every effort to extend and strengthen our democracy.
William Cahn, labor authority and historian
We want a better America, an America that will give its citizens, first of all, a higher and higher standard of living so that no child will cry for food in the midst of plenty.
Sidney Hillman (1887-1946), first president (1914-1946) of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), Textile Workers Union of Needlecrafts, Industrial & Textile Employees (UNITE)
The union miner cannot agree to the acceptance of a wage principle which will permit his annual earnings and his living standards to be determined by the hungriest unfortunates whom the non-union operators can employ.
John L. Lewis, 1927, in Labor Baron, "A Portrait of John L. Lewis, 1944"
Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the national pie-labor is fighting for a larger pie.
Walter Reuther, 1945
If there is no struggle, there can be no progress.
Frederick Douglas
Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas Iscariot was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a strikebreaker is a traitor to his God, his country, his wife, his family and his class.
Jack (John Griffith) London (1876-1916), author, socialist, adventurer, The Definition of a Scab
Long ago we stated the reason for labor organizations. We said that they were organized out of the necessities of the situation: that a single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer;
that union was essential to give the laborers opportunity to deal on equality with their employer.
Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (1862-1948) for the U.S. Supreme Court (1930-1941), in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. 301 1 at 33, 1937
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than the other association of men.
Clarence Darrow, The Railroad Trainman, 1909
The history of the labor movements needs to be taught in every school in this land. America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life.
We ought to be proud of it!
Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (1865-1969), Lyndon Johnson Administration
There is nothing fairer than workmen having unions of their mutual benefit.
Will Rogers (1879-1935), humorist, political commentator, journalist, actor, 1943, in Freedom of the Press, 1935
What can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult. Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its forces. This done, it can demand and command.
Eugene Debs, in The Bending Cross, 1949
But today I take it that every intelligent person who has investigated this question, outside of the counsel foe the State, understands that working men have the right to organize; understands that if laborers are not satisfied with their conditions, they may stop work; they may stop work singly or collectively, exactly as they please, and no court will say them nay.
Clarence Darrow, 1898, in Attorney for the Damned, 1957
Effective labor unions are still by far the most powerful force in society for the protection of the laborer's rights and the improvement of his or her condition. No amount of employer benevolence, no diffusion of a sympathetic attitude on the part of the public, no increase of beneficial legislation, can adequately supply for the lack of organization among the workers themselves.
Monsignor John A. Ryan, in Organized Labor and the Church, 1993
In light of this fundamental structure of all work
in light of the fact that, labor and capital are indispensable in any social system
it is clear that even if it is because of production in any social system
it is clear that even if it is because of their work needs that people unite to secure their rights, their union remains a constructive factor of social order and solidarity, and it is impossible to ignore it.
Pope John Paul II
When labor speaks of free medical care, it is saying we need it for blacks who do not have it and whites who are concerned that they will have to pay for giving it to them. When labor calls for full employment, it is talking about blacks who are without jobs and whites who want to protect the ones they have. When labor says we must build more homes, it is seeking to create a society where the black brother need not be enraged because he does not have a home and the white need not fear for the home he has.
Bayard Rustin (1910-1987), black social activist and a founding member of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), civil rights organizer, Fellowship of Reconciliation, field and race relations secretary (1941-1953), in Overcoming Middle Class Rage, 1971
Long ago we stated the reason for labor organizations. We said that union was essential to give laborers opportunity to deal on an equality with their employer.
U.S. Supreme Court, NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. 301 U.S. 1, 1937
The labor movement has led the fight for progressive social legislation from civil rights to Social Security and minimum wage laws.
Ray Marshall
Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
Samuel Gompers
The American trade union movement-unlike any other labor movement in the world-is committed to working within the American political and economic system in order to achieve the social and economic justice promised by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
George Meany, AFL-CIO Labor Day message, 1978
The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.
A. Philip Randolph
It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic modern nation that it has free and independent labor unions.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, speech before Teamster's union, Washington, D.C., 9/11/1940
The first thing a dictator does is abolish the free press. Next he abolishes the right of labor to go on strike. Strikes have been labor's weapon of progress in the century of our industrial civilization. Where the strike has been abolished
labor is reduced to a state of medieval peonage, the standard of living lowered, the nation falls to subsistence level.
George Seldes, Freedom of the Press, 1935
Every piece of progressive social legislation passed by Congress in the 20th century bears a union label.
George Meany
The trade unions are the legitimate outgrowth of modern society and industrial conditions.
They were born of the necessity of workers to protect and defend themselves from encroachment, injustice and wrong.
To protect the workers in their inalienable rights to a higher and better life; to protect them, no only as equals before the law, but also in their health, their homes, their firesides, their liberties as men, as workers, and as citizens; to overcome and conquer prejudices and antagonism; to secure to them the fight to life; the right to be full sharers in the abundance which is the result of their brain and brawn, and the civilization of which they are the founders and the mainstay; to this the workers are entitled.
The attainment of these is the glorious mission of the trade unions.
Samuel Gompers, speech, 1898
As long as there are such trade unionists, labor will be opposed by those who seek to portray workers and their unions as separate entities-referring to unions as an unneeded 'third force,' just as the diehard segregationists falsely labeled civil rights organizations as 'outside agitators.'
George Meany, 1979
An opinion on Unions
