Peter J. McGuire Quotes

The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

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.

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.

Labor cannot on any terms surrender the right to strike.

No strike has ever been lost.

The strike is the weapon of the industrial jungle.

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

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.

If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop.

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.

Instead of focusing on attacking unions and the labor movement, we need to find ways to strengthen and empower workers so we can put more money in the pockets of middle class families.

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

I think we will see a united labor movement again. When workers unite they're stronger. The same goes for unions.

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.

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

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.

Your strike will not win. You cannot be allowed to succeed.

Everything is produced by the workers, and the minute they try to get something by their unions they meet all the opposition that can be mustered by those who now get what they produce.

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.

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.

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

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

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