Union Power Quotes

The trade union, which originated under the European system, destroys liberty.

Policies are designed to undermine working class organization and the reason is not only the unions fight for workers' rights, but they also have a democratizing effect. These are institutions in which people without power can get together, support one another, learn about the world, try out their ideas, initiate programs, and that is dangerous. That's like a referendum in Greece. It is dangerous to allow that.

Labor cannot on any terms surrender the right to strike.

Power? Nine workers out of ten still unorganized, and union dues going to bribe middle class politicians. You call that power?

The government union bosses are the most powerful politicians in Springfield.

There's a direct relationship between the bread box and the ballot box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.

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.

No society can tolerate strikes that endanger the general welfare, such as a strike that shuts down an entire industry. Nor can any government tolerate a strike aimed at its authority. But the “right to strike” is absolutely necessary to the cohesion, if not indeed to the survival, of the union; without it it cannot discharge its function.

It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

Unquestionably unions and their leaders are not always wise and fair any more than any other human beings.

When you have powerful unions, you have a working class that is politicized.

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

All too often miners, and indeed other trade unionists, underestimate the economic strength they have.

I don't want to see this country run by big business and big labor.

Teacher unions are an interest group that acts in defense of their own interests, which means the union bosses' interests, not the members.

The New Deal Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act which granted unrestricted sovereign power to the barons of union labor.

I'm not going to stop beating up on the unions.

What Franklin Roosevelt did, which really offended them, was he strengthened the labor unions - made it possible for them to strike. The oligarchs were furious because the working class was not supposed to have any power at all.

The blunt tools of legislation or union power can force a corporation to pay higher wages, but if employees don't create an equal amount of additional value, there's no net gain.

Now workers should have the right to join unions. But unions should not be forced upon workers. And unions should not have the power to take money our of their members' paychecks to buy the support of politicians that are favored by the union bosses.

The real bottom line is, the national unions want their hands on the money.

I have managed to infuriate the bank bosses; acquire a fatwa from the revolutionary guards of the trades union movement; frighten the 'Daily Telegraph' with a progressive graduate payment; and upset very rich people who are trying to dodge British taxes. I must be doing something right.

Less than 8 percent of private sector workers belonged to a union in 2004, and, overall, only 12.5 percent of American workers carry a union card - down from about one-third of workers in labor's heydays in the 1950s.

The reality is that no one can be forced to join a union against their will, and a union cannot take action against those who decide not to join their union.

We've discussed the public sector union people. We are messing with their bread and butter. They have their hands in the treasuries of all states in which they operate and the US Treasury. They have their hands there. That's how they live. Now, we're broke and the states are broke for a multitude of reasons. What they're being paid is among them.