Workers of the World, Give It Up

Sunday, April 3, 2011 – Workers of the World, Give It Up

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Although it is true that only about twenty percent of American workers are in unions, that twenty percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts. ~ Molly Ivins

The important role of union organizations must be admitted: their object is the representation of the various categories of workers, their lawful collaboration in the economic advance of society, and the development of the sense of their responsibility for the realization of the common good. ~ Pope Paul VI

We want only loyal workers who are grateful from the bottom of their hearts for the bread which we let them earn. ~ Gustav Krupp

I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field. ~ Albert Einstein

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers. ~ George Orwell

A Mission Statement is a dense slab of words that a large organization produces when it needs to establish that its workers are not just sitting around downloading Internet porn. ~ Dave Barry

At this point, American workers are pretty respectful of the bosses they loathe. ~ Ted Rall

I can walk through the front door of any factory and out the back and tell you if it’s making money or not. I can just tell by the way it’s being run and by the spirit of the workers. ~ Harvey S. Firestone

The employers cannot carry on industry nor accumulate profits if they have not got the good will of the workers or their acquiescence in carrying on such industry. ~ James Larkin

In the early days, I didn’t have the money to pay decent salaries, so I didn’t get good people. I got nice people, but I didn’t get good employees. ~ Louise Hay

If ants are such busy workers, how come they find time to go to all the picnics? ~ Marie Dressler

The capitalists speculate on the two following factors: the female worker must be paid as poorly as possible and the competition of female labor must be employed to lower the wages of male workers as much as possible. ~ Clara Zetkin

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. ~ Karl Marx

The organized workers of America, free in their industrial life, conscious partners in production, secure in their homes and enjoying a decent standard of living, will prove the finest bulwark against the intrusion of alien doctrines of government. ~ John L. Lewis

The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience. ~ Lech Walesa

The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers… It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish. ~ Samuel Gompers

The corporation is the “master”, the employee is the “servant” – and because the corporation owns the means of production without which the employee could not make a living, the employee needs the corporation more than vice versa. ~ Peter Drucker

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. ~ John F. Kennedy, August 30, 1960

With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men 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 any other association of men. ~ Clarence Darrow, The Railroad Trainman, November 1909

You know, when I was in college, there was a big debate: Do unions raise wages? Well, with regard to industrial unions, there were arguments back and forth — international competition. It is now clear, I think, that whether or not you think unions raised wages fifty years ago, the absence of unions and their weakness that is inflicted by anti-union public policy depresses wages. The fact is that people who are not represented, in the service industries in particular, are the victims of policies which depress their wages. ~ Barney Frank, speech, January 3, 2007

To remember the loneliness, the fear and the insecurity of men who once had to walk alone in huge factories, beside huge machines – to realize that labor unions have meant new dignity and pride to millions of our countrymen – human companionship on the job, and music in the home – to be able to see what larger pay checks mean, not to a man as an employee, but as a husband and as a father – to know these things is to understand what American labor means. ~ Adlai Stevenson, speech, September 22, 1952

If we take back the labor unions, the legitimate businesses, eventually they become just another street gang. Spiritually, psychologically, they’ve always been just a street gang. ~ Rudolph W. Giuliani

We want only loyal workers who are grateful from the bottom of their hearts for the bread which we let them earn. ~ Gustav Krupp