Murray Bookchin Quotes

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

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.

I have been very interested in labor movement. If I could have wished another life, I would have loved to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor movement.

What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves.

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.

The employer class is less indispensable in the modern organization of industries because the laboring men themselves possess sufficient intelligence to organize into co-operative relation and enjoy the entire benefits of their own labor.

And the success of the union movement, historically, has always been to benefit all working men and women - not just people who belong to the union.

The trade unions, far from being content with these declarations, established international liaisons and supported every policy based on pacification and understanding.

I think you'll see if you look at 'Up', we've focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise.

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.

We could see the Teamsters coming in from New Jersey, the AFL-CIO from Chicago. You could see all of the people being bused in.

The question is always 'What is the role of a labor movement?' How much is about collective bargaining, how much is about social change for all workers?

The working class owes all honor and respect to the first men who planted the standard of labor solidarity on the hostile frontier of unorganized industry.

[William Z.] Foster was a trade union organizer without a peer. In each case, however, his work was permitted and controlled by other forces which Foster had to serve....

The task is before us. We have a labor movement that is completely discouraged and demoralized. We have an organized labor movement that is unable on any front to put up an effective struggle against the drive of destruction organized by the masters….the labor unions of America are being broken up because there is not sufficient unified understanding, because there is not sufficient leadership to save them.

We back Solidarity [the Polish trade union], and bust our unions.

The weapon of political action. That is going to be the main fighting weapon of all labor, international as well as national, if we are going to do those things that we are in business to do as a labor union

Power? Nine workers out of ten still unorganized, and union dues going to bribe middle class politicians. You call that power?

Do not let [“Big”] Bill Hayward and the Industrial Workers of the World terrorize President, Congress, Judge and Juries.

It is for the benefit of them and to the public that laborers should unite in their common interest and for lawful purposes. If they stand together, they are often able, all of them, to command better prices for their labor than when dealing singly with rich employers …

In the ten years I was president of the Teamsters, I had raised the membership from eight hundred thousand to more than 2 million and made it the largest single labor union the world.

The labor movement was the principal force that transforme­d misery and despair into hope and progress.

I have no use for those- regardless of their political party- who hold some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass.