Quotes about Union Corruption

Hillary Clinton

Such pushy people, the school union chiefs.It's almost not worth the campaign donations. Almost.

Theodore Roosevelt

I believe in corporations. I believe in trade unions. Both have come to stay and are necessities in our present industrial system, But where, either one or the other, there develops corruption or mere brutal indifference to the rights of others … then the offender, whether union or corporation, must be fought.

Bill Shorten

To the best of my knowledge, when I became national secretary and, indeed, Victorian secretary, the - my predecessors in the union had detected wrong activities, activities which aren't in the best traditions of the AWU or, indeed, trade unionism.

James P. Hoffa

The mob's not coming back in the Teamsters Union. We've gotten rid of them, and we're free to be free of government supervision.

Michelle Malkin

Instead of basic roads and bridges, infrastructure spending will go to bloated unions overseeing pie-in-the-sky construction projects like the $30 billion-plus high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which California officials fully expect to be funded.

Newt Gingrich

The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.

Harold Daggett

These people today don’t know what a strike is. When my men hit the streets from Maine to Texas, every single port a lockdown, you know what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you.

First week, be all over the news every night. Boom, boom. Second week, guys who sell cars can’t sell cars because the cars ain’t coming in off the ships. They get laid off. Third week, malls start closing down. They can’t get the goods from China. They can’t sell clothes. They can’t do this. Everything in the United States comes on a ship. They go out of business. Construction workers get laid off because the materials aren’t coming in, the steel’s not coming in, the lumber’s not coming in. They lose their job. Everybody’s hating the longshoreman now, because now they realize how important our jobs are. Now I have the president screaming at me. “I’m putting a Taft-Hartley on you.” Go ahead. Taft-Hartley means I have to go back to work for 90 days. That’s a cooling-off period. Do you think when I go back for 90 days those men are going to go to work on that pier? It’s going to cost them money, the company’s money, to pay their salaries. Well, they went from 30 moves an hour, maybe to eight. They’re going to be like this [clasps neck]. Who’s going to win here in the long run? You’re better off sitting down and let’s get a contract, and let’s move on with this world. And in today’s world, I’ll cripple you. I will cripple you, and you have no idea what that means. Nobody does.

From an interview prior to the 2024 International Longshoreman Association strike. Daggett makes more than $900,000 a year as the union boss, drives a Bentley and owns a 76-foot yacht.

Rudy Giuliani

If we take back the labor unions, the legitimate businesses, eventually they become just another street gang. Spiritually, psychologically, they've always been just a street gang.

Paul Krugman

We should not idealize unions. Occasionally they were corrupt, and sometimes enforced inefficiency. But they helped keep us a middle class society because they provided a counterweight to the power of wealthy individuals and corporations.

Jonah Goldberg

Today's unions are less Mobbed-up than those of yesteryear to be sure, but they're hardly above tactics that would be considered intimidating and coercive.

James P. Hoffa

The teamsters union is as free of corruption as any great institution.

Andrew Neil

I'm proud to have played a major part in destroying Fleet Street, a corrupt cartel of unions and proprietors that operated against the public interest.

Union Corruption Quotes