Labour Disputes Quotes

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

The contest will be between the capitalists and operatives; for into these two classes it must ultimately divide society.

The backwoodsmen are muttering about making Britain's draconian union laws - already among the toughest in Europe - harsher still. And parts of the media will continue to attack public service pensions, as if school meals staff, refuse collectors and healthcare workers have no right to a decent retirement.

Unions may also legitimately resort to strikes where this is the only available means to the justice owed to workers

In truth, also, however the matter may be disguised, the combinations among workmen to obtain higher wages, which are now so general and so much complained of, are practical attacks on the claims of capital…. On the side of the labourers there is physical strength, for they are more numerous than their opponents. They are also fast losing that reverence for their opponents which was and is the source of their power, and they are daily acquiring a moral strength which results from a common interest and a close and intimate union …

No strike could ever be won with a Communist at its head since the employers would make victory impossible.

We are not a nation of strikes and inaction. We will not be preached at by militant unionists with a crap whippet and a chip on each shoulder.

The people who are making you feel under attack is your union leadership, and they're doing it for politically intense reasons.

Those who want to divide the workers have resorted to the foulest methods.

I grew up and lived in a Britain in which strikes and the threat of strikes had become part of the social fabric - and it was not very nice.

The avowed policy of non-co-operation has been not to make political use of the disputes between labour and capital.

Unfortunately, in collective bargaining one party or the other too often tries to gain an advantage - a bargain, like buying something in a store for less than it is worth.

The two sides of industry have traditionally always regarded each other in Britain with the greatest possible loathing, mistrust and contempt. They are both absolutely right.

Putting roadblocks in the way of legitimate strike action only increases the likelihood of more wildcat strikes, which in turn will make it that much harder for employers to address legitimate grievances, given that they'll lose the ability to negotiate with recognised union leaders.

It is the hard-boiled employer, not the soft-hearted species, that incites most of our strikes and does most ot endanger the harmonious progress of democracy.

Our recent 5-year labour agreements, in Canada as well as the United States, are based upon experience, logic and principle rather than on pressure, propaganda and force.

The music industry isn't unionised in the same way Hollywood is. If I've got a problem, who do I go to?