Labor & Employment Law

Great Quotes: ?Only a Fool? Would Block Workers from Unions

By James Parks

As Labor Day approaches, here are some great quotes reinforcing the value of unions to our nation. A big thumbs-up to Ramona for her blog on TPM, which includes quotes from leaders as diverse as Dwight Eisenhower, Clarence Darrow and Pope John Paul II.

Eisenhower sounds like he is endorsing the Employee Free Choice Act:

Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.

The quotes, which were collected by the American Labor Studies Center, begin with a statement by Daniel Webster in 1824 that “Labor is the great producer of wealth: it moves all other causes.”

Acclaimed lawyer Darrow said, “Trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization that ever existed.”

They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than the other association of men.

And if there was ever a doubt about the importance of unions, just read what journalist and author George Seldes had to say more than seven decades ago:

The first thing a dictator does is abolish the free press. Next he abolishes the right of labor to go on strike. Strikes have been labor’s weapon of progress in the century of our industrial civilization. Where the strike has been abolished…labor is reduced to a state of medieval peonage, the standard of living lowered, the nation falls to subsistence level.

Here’s what President Lyndon Johnson said in 1965 about us:

The AFL-CIO has done more good for more people than any (other) group in America in its legislative efforts. It doesn’t just try to do something about wages and hours for its own people. No group in the country works harder in the interests of everyone.

Check out the rest of the quotes here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).