Top 1200 Organized Labor Quotes & Sayings

In a democracy there are only two types of power: there's organized people and organized money, and organized money only wins when people aren't organized.

Labor, being itself a commodity, is measured as such by the labor time needed to produce the labor-commodity. And what is needed to produce this labor-commodity? Just enough labor time to produce the objects indispensable to the constant maintenance of labor, that is, to keep the worker alive and in a condition to propagate his race. The natural price of labor is no other than the wage minimum.

One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor - backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.

And I've always been very close to my friends and allies in the black community, the Latino community and organized labor.

If we don't have workers organized into labor unions, we're in great peril of losing our democracy.

I usually lump organized religion, organized labor, and organized crime together. The Mafia gets points for having the best restaurants

I think the reality is that there's a role for everybody to play in the work of social justice and that we have to organize everybody. That means that Silicon Valley has to be organized, the fashion industry has to be organized, the formerly incarcerated have to be organized, the teachers.

We talk about Hollywood being pro-labor, yet about 70% of our industry has been farmed out to Canada, meaning we are losing jobs like crazy. Where's organized labor asking how we can allow such a thing to happen?

All that serves labor serves the Nation. All ^ that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.

I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor, and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the 'economic means' for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the 'political means'.

Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.

We'll be competitive with organized labor, we're also competitive with regular, unorganized labor, working people who see their stakes and their future in the plans we're putting forward to move Massachusetts forward.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

What about precarious labor? It's actually not the most efficient form of labor at all. They were much more efficient when they had loyalty to their workers and people were allowed to be creative and contribute - you know that what precarious labor does is that it's the best weapon ever made to depoliticize labor. They're always putting the political in front of the economic.

One of the things we've lost as blacks in the United States is imagining different ways the world could be organized, how this country could be organized, how politics could be organized.

I am a huge believer in organized labor. Period. Full stop.

Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.

Organized religions have all the facets of organized crime, except the compassion of organized crime.

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

We have seen the civil rights movement insist on re-writing many of the textbooks in our universities and schools. The labor unions likewise insist that textbooks be fair to the viewpoints of organized labor. Other interested citizens groups have not hesitated to review, analyze and criticize textbooks and teaching materials.

While most American labor unions have struggled for the past several decades, professional baseball players comprise one of the strongest packs of organized workers in the world.

There's nothing wrong with being organized.Things that change history tend to be organized.

A small group is powerful in matters relating to a particular industry, because then it is normally the only organized force, but it is less formidable when questions which divide the entire nation are involved, for then it must take on organized labor and other large organized groups. The business community in the aggregate is for this reason not uniquely effective as a pressure group.

I think it is a wise course for laborers to unite to defend their interests.... I think the employer who declines to deal with organized labor and to recognize it as a proper element in the settlement of wage controversies is behind the times.... Of course, when organized labor permits itself to sympathize with violent methods or undue duress, it is not entitled to our sympathy.

The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.

I believe if an individual wants to join organized labor and work under a union contract, they should have the legal right to do so. At the same token, a person who does not want to work under organized labor and wants to work should have the ability to do so without the threat of having to join and having to pay dues to organized labor.

I think being organized should be in your lifestyle. I run a few different businesses, so I have to be organized. And I think everyone around me will also feel organized. To have chaos going on, it just doesn't work.

The labor movement is organized upon a principle that the strong shall help the weak.

Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth...

Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor.

Strong, responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided. The parties to the labor contract must be nearly equal in strength if justice is to be worked out, and this means that the workers must be organized and that their organizations must be recognized by employers as a condition precedent to industrial peace.

Organized labor still has privileges and legal immunities that even kings and governments lost years ago.

The owners of labor, on the other hand, are being taught, by the most powerful and well-publicized examples, that the highest rewards are not for production, but for the employment of organized power to take over a share of what others produce.

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

A basic assumption shapes most Americans’ mindset about labor: the belief that the death of unions isn’t my problem because I’m not in a union. That assumption is wrong. Even if you aren’t a member, your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.

My favorite part of any military feature, aside from the people themselves, is how clean and organized everything is. I like things clean and organized, and they don't get any cleaner or more organized than they are in any branch of the military.

Our findings with reference to organized crime was that organized crime as an entity didn't participate in the assassination of the president. However, we were unable to preclude the possibility of individual members of organized crime having participated.

We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.... [The organized moneyed people] are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.... I should like to have it said of my second administration that these forces met their master.

Collective bargaining has always been the bedrock of the American labor movement. I hope that you will continue to anchor your movement to this foundation. Free collective bargaining is good for the entire Nation. In my view, it is the only alternative to State regulation of wages and prices - a path which leads far down the grim road of totalitarianism. Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor - those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized - do a disservice to the cause of democracy.

It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.

[A.J. Muste] was from Michigan and he grew up in the Dutch Reform Church there, which is a fairly strict church. He later came to New York. He was the minister of a labor temple in the - on the East Side. Then he founded, to my knowledge, the first, maybe the only, labor school; that is, Cornell has a labor department and other schools. But this was a school for - entirely for labor organizers, and he was the - the chairman.

Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.

Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.

There is a middle class in America for only one reason: organized labor. If not for organized labor, where would you find a job where you had some sense that you had a shot of leaving behind something better than you inherited?.

The organized labor movement as it is constituted today is as much a concomitant of a capitalist economy as is capital. Organized labor is predicated upon the basic premise of collective bargaining between employers and employees. This premise can obtain only for an employer-employee type of society. If the labor movement is to maintain its own identity and security, it must of necessity protect that kind of society.

Make no mistake about it! There is an organized movement against organized labor and it's called the Bush Administration.

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor.

To the question how one kind of labor can be measured against another, how the labor of the artisan can be measured against the labor of the artist, how the labor of the strong can be measured against the labor of the weak, the communists can give no answer.

Our society is connecting workers with the products people consume and recognizing workers for their contributions. It is important to do that, and to have organized labor - a middle class - to preserve our democracy.

Wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized protected robbery.

The history of the labor movement 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!

J. Edgar Hoover very famously denied the existence of organized crime up until the Appalachian Meeting, I think, in 1957. It was interesting to me that he clearly had to know that there was such a thing as organized crime and organized criminals as far back as the '20s.

In the form of security and sufficiency for the men who labor to the profit of others, and in the form of registering and controlling them in the form of an organized public supervision of their labor, slavery is already afoot. When slavery shall succeed it will succeed through the acquiescence of those who will be enslaved, for they will prefer sufficiency and security with enslavement, to freedom, responsibility, insecurity and the threat of insufficiency.

Organized labor, if they're doing a responsible job, is going to organize the pooling of small amounts of money to protect the interests of the people who are not rich.

In all the history of organized labor, from the earliest times to the present day, no body of union workingmen ever served in a more humiliating and debasing role than that in which the railway unions appear at this very hour before the American people and the world.

I think organized labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth.

Labor unions have a long history of benefitting all workers, even those who are not members of unions, because everyone's wages go up. If we don't increase membership - and membership in labor unions is going down because of the attacks against organized labor - it's something every single American, whether they're officially in a union or not, should be concerned about. It's a spiral. It's a weakening of the middle class and our economy can't sustain that.

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior ofcapital, and deserves muchthe higher consideration.

It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act.

A demand for commodities is not a demand for labor. The demand for labor is determined by the amount of capital directly devoted to the remuneration of labor: the demand for commodities simply determines in what direction labor shall be employed.