Randi Weingarten Quotes

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 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.

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.

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

Trade unions are a force for good - a force for a more equal society.

I come from labor country. My mom was a teacher and was very involved in the teachers' union.

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

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

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

We're the party that's fought for increased wages, fought for the union movement, fought to make sure that collective bargaining is not eviscerated, it's strengthened. And when we communicate those messages, we succeed.

My job is to represent working people.

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.

While the men of the steel industry were going through blood and gas in defense of their rights and their homes and their families, elsewhere on the far-flung C.I.O. front the hosts of labor were advancing and intelligent and permanent progress was being made.

To denigrate the union movement in this way is to denigrate the right and the ability of people who are not rich to organize and to accomplish things together.

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.

It means that the men who hold the means of life control our lives, and, because we workingmen have tried to get some measure of justice, some measure of betterment, they deny the right of the human being to associate with his fellow.

The union movement has been the best middle class job creating program that America has ever had, and it doesn't cost the government a dime.

Starting that union was something I believed in very strongly.

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

To fulfill the promise of economic opportunity, we must remain true to the principle that collective bargaining is a cornerstone of a free society and indispensable to a strong middle class.

Working people are under the worst attack in 80 years. Never has there been a stronger need for a stronger union movement.

The hospital strikers have demonstrated that you don't get a job done unless you show the Man you're not afraid...If you're not willing to pay that price, then you don't deserve the rewards or benefits that go along with it.

The Lincoln of Labor

I am always on the side of labor when there is any compromise to be made.