Ralph Chaplin Quotes

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

The task is before us. We have a labor movement that is completely discouraged and demoralized. We have an organized labor movement that is unable on any front to put up an effective struggle against the drive of destruction organized by the masters….the labor unions of America are being broken up because there is not sufficient unified understanding, because there is not sufficient leadership to save them.

You can't co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class.

The men in the steel industry who sacrificed their all were nor merely aiding their fellows at home but were adding strength to the cause of their comrades in all industry.

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

The labor movement has failed to capture the support of the public at large.

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

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.

It is essential that there be organization of labor…. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

Mitchell is only a common coal miner who has worked with his hands for 15 years, and is now a labor agitator. Any negotiations with him would unduly recognize a mere rabble-rouser..

My training was with some old British communists who had organized unions in the '60s and '70s. And their philosophy was, if you can't drink a pint with a man, how are you gonna get him to go on strike and risk his life?

I am a huge believer in organized labor. Period. Full stop.

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.

While unions did not play a part in my family life when I was being brought up, my early years were most certainly spent in a working-class community.

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.

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.

At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence.

I think you'll see if you look at 'Up', we've focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise.

Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.

A divided labor movement hurts the prospects of union members and it makes me very angry.

[William Z.] Foster was a trade union organizer without a peer. In each case, however, his work was permitted and controlled by other forces which Foster had to serve....

When wage controls and other legal restrictions on Canadian workers of the government's only answer to that country's deepening economic problems, the labor movement's response has to be fundamentally political.

Many of those who helped to lay the foundations of the trade union movement were men who had been through the experience of Socialism and found their way to sounder policies.

Regardless of the degree of class consciousness of their members, the trade unions are, by their very nature, driven on to the revolutionary goal.