Louis D. Brandeis Quotes

Thank God we have a system of labor where there can be a strike.

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

The labor union is a great scheme to interrupt work. It speeds up loafing

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

I fight like a daggone wild man for labor unions.

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.

Neither the common law nor the Fourteenth Amendment confers the absolute right to strike.

There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.

The strike is the weapon of the industrial jungle.

It is not right for public officials to bring scabs and gunmen into any state. I am directly opposed to it myself, but if it is a question of strike or you go into slavery, then I say strike until the last one of us drop into our graves.

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

No strike is a loss or failure to the workers, even if the point sought is not gained for the time being. If naught else they teach the capitalists that they are expensive luxuries.

We have reached the point where we must advise the miners … to either continue working under these unjust and tyrannical conditions or counsel a strike.

The history of all countries shows that, by its own efforts, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness—that is, the realization of the need of getting together in unions in order to fight employers and to demand from the government the passing of laws necessary for the workers.

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 support collective bargaining everywhere.

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.

It's easy for people to strike if they're not working on a regular basis.

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

I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.

I am a proud trade unionist.

I sometimes think that unions don't understand that we live in a free society, and people have the right to not select union representation if they don't want it.

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.

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.