Richard Ojeda Quotes

I want to see the writers strike because the writers, god bless them, are the only true commies we have in Hollywood.

One of the great things about unions is they're member driven and give us the great ability to both lead and follow at the same time.

There is nothing that says unions have a God-given right to be there. We have to work at it and make ourselves relevant to every section of the workforce.

Then came a big strike. About 100 girls went out. The result was a victory, which netted us - I mean the girls - $2 increase in our wages on the average.

I guess it kind of stemmed from my father. He was a union guy working for the meat plant down in Kansas City. He was a union guy, and I guess it was just in my blood.

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.

I remember being amazed that actors had a union. I thought only coal miners had unions, or guys that worked in automobile plants. That's an indication of how naive I was.

If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.

Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined effort for a common object, but to indulge in declamation and denunciation, and especially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work.

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 steel industry the corporations generally have accepted collective bargaining and negotiated wage agreements with the Committee for Industrial Organization.

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.

I have known the fruits of strikes. The bitter and the sweet. Hunger and music.

I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.

Congress has turned its back on America's working families. There are Teamster families in every congressional district in America, and those families vote. Those who would oppose these families have done so at their own political peril.

My grandfather and dad worked at General American Transportation Corp. in Chicago, a company that made tank cars and freight cars. We had a pragmatic, Republican, manufacturing, Illinois consciousness as far as employment went.

I would say that if you really wished to be a working member of the community, don't go out on strike because then there's no work and no potential of work.

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

We were no experts in the field of labor organization, but we had something in common with our fellow workers -- we were all poor -- we were all overworked -- we were all victims of the 84 hour week. In fact, we were all so low down on the economic and social ladder that we had nowhere to go but up

Labor cannot on any terms surrender the right to strike.

Labor Unions are revolutionary and anarchistic and a menace to the entire social and industrial system of the United States.

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 strikebreaker is the hero of American industry.

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.