Jan Schakowsky Quotes

My father was a meat worker. He was a union organizer in the meat workers union.

I will never apologize for standing up for my fellow Teamsters and all American workers.

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 union guy; I've always been. I've been in SAG 35 years; my father was a garbage man, a sanitation man, for the city, a union guy.

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.

We have tried voluntary codes and we have tried free markets, but they have not worked, so we need to try something else. Legislation is not a panacea for all the inequalities in the workplace, but it will go a long way towards stopping them. Effective employment legislation is needed

My job is to represent working people.

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.

I'm pro Union.

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.

And I think we understand we cannot make social change for all workers until we have enough strength, membership strength, and at the same time having membership strength and only making change for a limited group of workers is not what our country really needs for people that work.

I was an organizer in the Food, Agricultural and Tobacco Workers Union down in North Carolina.

Out of labor's struggle in Arizona came better conditions for the workers, who must everywhere, at all times, under advantage and disadvantage work out their own salvation.

In my college years, I worked as a union labor organizer. I was just one of the many workers trying to do my part to help the community.

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?

During those twelve hour nights we’d chat about the motormen, conductors, guards etc. whose conditions were even worse. They had to work a ‘spread’ of 16 hours each day in order to get 10 hours pay. Negro workers could get jobs only as porters. They were subjected to treatment that makes Little Rock and Birmingham seem liberal and respectable by comparison … I also saw Catholic ticket agents fired by Catholic bosses for going to mass early in the morning while the porter ‘covered’ the booth for half an hour. Protestant bosses fired Protestant workers for similar crimes — going to church. The Jewish workers had no trouble with the subway bosses — Jews were denied employment in the transit lines.

The labor question is the same the world over, and laborers of the world should clasp hands for their common wealth.

The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions.

I will only stop defending the rights of workers when I die.

Trade unionism means the enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie.

The most fervid demand, however, of all the workers on strike was for a shorter day … 10½ hours instead or 13 hours as formerly, or even 14 and 16 reckoning the time of cleaning machinery.

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

My heart lies with the workers.

The labor movement has lifted more people out of poverty than all the programs in the country.

There are only two ways to bring about protection of the workers, however, legislation and unionization. So far the majority of the people in this country seem to favor unions as a more democratic and elastic method, though certain things must be dealt with by legislation