Peter Falk Quotes

Trade unionism is not a discovery or a formula. It grew and evolved slowly out of the needs of human experience.

I'm a big believer in the value of labor unions and with what collective effort gets people.

The trade union, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty.

The only way a workingman can get anything is by collective bargaining, and by saying "If you don't give us a raise, not only will I quit but we will all quit and tie up your business

The methods by which a trade union can alone act are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.

The picket line is the best place to train organizers. One day on the picket line is where a man makes his commitment. The longer on the picket line, the stronger the commitment. A lot of workers think they make their commitment by walking off the job when nobody sees them. But you get a guy to walk off the field when his boss is watching and, in front of the other guys, throw down his tools and march right to the picket line, that is the guy who makes our strike. The picket line is a beautiful thing because it makes a man more human.

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.

Although unions may be good for a worker, singular, they are not always good for workers, plural. Especially when it comes to finding a job.

In the heart of the Great Depression, millions of American workers did something they'd never done before: they joined a union. Emboldened by the passage of the Wagner Act, which made collective bargaining easier, unions organized industries across the country, remaking the economy.

That's what unions do. They can get money, they can get support, they can get manpower.

By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie.

Unions are about the collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital.

My problem with unions is they breed mediocrity.

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 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.

A divided labor movement hurts the prospects of union members and it makes me very angry.

After contract negotiations and organizing, playing an active role in the political process is one of a union's most important functions. Gains won at the bargaining table or through sacrifice on the picketline can be wiped out by politicians on the state or federal level.

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

The strongest form of fight against the capitalist class is the strike. Strikes are necessary, ever again, against the capitalists’ tendency to increase their profits by lowering wages and increase the hours or the intensity of work.

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

Labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth because they take away a man's independence.

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

The number of men out on strike exceeds that of any other industrial contest in the history of our country.

It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it.

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