Clarence Darrow Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I fight like a daggone wild man for labor unions.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

If we are going to reverse the race to the bottom, workers must have the right to engage in collective bargaining.

My problem with unions is they breed mediocrity.

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.

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 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.

Labor cannot on any terms surrender the right to strike.

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

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.

There is no other bargaining but collective bargaining.