A Quote by Andy Stern

The AFL-CIO is a structure that divides workers' strength by allowing each union to organize in any industry, then bargain on its own, even when workers share a common employer.

Andy Stern

Quote Topics

Afl Allowing Any Bargain Cio Common Divides Each Employer Even Industry Organize Own Share Strength Structure Then Union Workers

Quote Author

Andy Stern
American - Activist
Born: November 22, 1950

Most fast-food workers can't easily join a union, because they don't work directly for their parent company, such as McDonald's or Subway. Instead, they work for individual franchise owners, ensuring that each individual fast-food outlet would have to organize and win union recognition separately. So there's not one central employer to bargain with, as in a traditional union campaign.

David Rolf

We must have more union members in this country to fight the political and business forces that are undermining workers in this country. The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach by planning to throw even more money at politicians.

James P. Hoffa

Allowing workers' compensation for all injured workers is a better system than allowing people to be part of a black market of undocumented workers.

Rashida Tlaib

And if you are going to truly stand with workers, it also means embracing solidarity, not attempting through lame talking points to pit union workers against non-union workers.

Krystal Ball

If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.

Barack Obama

Less than 8 percent of private sector workers belonged to a union in 2004, and, overall, only 12.5 percent of American workers carry a union card - down from about one-third of workers in labor's heydays in the 1950s.

Linda Chavez

Union membership is not the sole guarantor of job security and a living wage, but nonunion factory workers do not enjoy the same protections as union workers. They're subject to exploitation, underpayment and lower standards of workplace safety - which is also often the case for manufacturing workers outside the United States.

Sean Doolittle

Where workers are not free to change employers or leave the country without the permission of their employer, workers are, de facto, in forced labour.

Sharan Burrow

We should strengthen our immigration laws to prevent the importation of foreign wages and working conditions. We should make it illegal for employers to lay off Americans and then fill their jobs by bringing in workers from overseas. Any U.S. employer who wishes to hire from abroad - even for temporary jobs - should have to recruit U.S. workers first. And we should end the unskilled immigration that competes with young Americans just entering the job market.

Edward Kennedy

Through that organization [Community Service Organization], I met Cesar Chavez. We had this common interest about farm workers. We ultimately left CSO to start the National Farm Workers Organization, which became the United Farm Workers. I was very blessed to have learned some of the skills of basic grassroots organizing from Mr. Ross and then be able to put that into practice in both CSO and the United Farm Workers.

Dolores Huerta

Judi Bari did something that I believe is unparalleled in the history of the environmental movement. She is an Earth First! activist who took it upon herself to organize Georgia Pacific sawmill workers into the IWW…Well guess what friends, environmentalists and rank and file timber workers becoming allies is the most dangerous thing in the world to the timber industry!

Darryl Cherney

Indeed, the share of teachers in a union has fallen to less than half, driven in part by older, unionized teachers retiring, the rise of certain districts' reliance on charters and other private education options, and legal changes that have curtailed the ability of unions to bargain on behalf of workers.

Annie Lowrey

The workers who get hurt by corner-cutting often do not realize they are being wronged. Even when they do, they do not have the support and resources to fight back. Without a union to stand behind them, these workers are forced to stay in bad jobs, or face no job at all.

Letitia James

The workers who harvest our food have been systematically denied the basic rights that are granted to all other American workers. They can be fired for trying to form a union or for attempting to improve their working conditions. They are not eligible for overtime pay, disability, or even unemployment insurance.

Eric Schneiderman

In the past we couldn't talk to non-union workers. Now we can at least talk to non-union workers so we'll be mobilizing them and educating them not for just six or eight months before an election, but we'll be doing it year-round.