The right to strike is one of the most important safeguards working people have in this country. It’s a weapon of last resort that has served throughout history as a bargaining tool which allows unions to push for recognition of ordinary workers’ rights to be paid fairly and treated with dignity.
I make a lot of money. I can take a pay cut. All my friends are taking pay cuts that are in the unions, that are – that are farming in Alabama or whatever it is. I can surely take a pay cut, too, not cutting down my show or – or the people that work for me, I can take a pay cut.
We don’t have unions in South Carolina because we don’t need unions in South Carolina.
The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money.
Thousands of Americans are forced to join unions as a condition of employment, with little to no chance of ever having their voices heard.
I’m not going to stop beating up on the unions.
Unions can play a valuable role in large organisations where it is difficult to talk to a thousand people. They can negotiate annual pay awards with management, represent grievance cases, and explain and advise on complicated changes in employment or pension law.
While religious institutions should be able to pick and choose which unions they bless, civil governments should issue marriage licenses to all couples.
When you buy toothpaste or detergent or gas, that is now used for the first time in your lifetime or my lifetime to support candidates in so-called ‘independent ads.’ Same thing for unions.
Couples that do save have stronger, more stable, less stressful unions. In other words, you don’t want to be fighting about saving; you just want to be saving, period.
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.
The strategy we need to pursue is one of recovering our time – to push back on our hours of work. We need to form a new alliance between feminist groups, labor unions, child advocates, progressive corporations, and the federal government insofar as it’s willing to pursue a family-friendly agenda.
The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.
Many people feel that unions aren’t militant enough for them and don’t do anything.
I don’t think it’s a great leap to go from civil unions to gay marriage – I may be in the minority in believing that.
There’s no representation. That’s why the NBA Players Association was formed, players’ unions were formed. That’s why those unions were formed – to have representation before you make rules for me that I have to abide by. How can I participate and how can it be fair if there’s no representation?
In the 1970s, New York City avoided bankruptcy because wise political leaders like Gov. Hugh L. Carey believed both in strong labor unions and robust banks and companies.
And if we truly want a strong and secure middle class, we must restore the ability of labor unions to organize and represent working people.
The Communists were interested in getting into key positions as union officers, statisticians, economists, etc., in order to utilize the apparatus of the unions to promote the cause of revolution.
We make our own labor unions. We organize our labor into units of 300, and then the representatives of these 300 meet together every week. Then every fortnight they meet with the head men.
Whether one has a favorable or unfavorable opinion of unions, their demise is also the demise of countervailing power. A system in which there is no countervailing power is a tyranny in which power is unconstrained and unaccountable.
The trade unions and the Labour Party… failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing.
2009 was a tough year, but Australia rose to the challenge of the global financial crisis. It shows what can be done when we all join together and work together, governments of all persuasions state, territory and local; businesses large and small; unions and local communities right across the nation.
Unions did in fact build the middle class. And here’s what that did. That built the United States of America as we know it.
Many people have mixed views about unions, but unions used to give people some measure of control at work. They gave them a social life and political representation in Washington, which doesn’t really exist anymore.
Getting political representation is important, but change comes through using direct action, campaigning, and trade unions.
Unions in wedlock are perverted by the victory of shameless passion that masters the female among men and beasts.
Local prosecutors work alongside local police officers on a regular basis and are therefore conflicted when it comes to prosecuting those same officers. They are under extreme pressure from local police unions and from rank-and-file cops.
I’m a lobbyist and had a career lobbying. The guy who gets elected or the lady who gets elected president of the United States will immediately be lobbying. They would be advocating to the Congress, they’ll be lobbying our allies and our adversaries overseas. They’ll be asking the business community and labor unions.
When it comes to jobs, investment, growth, security and our influence in the world we are clearly stronger in Europe. But we are also making a Labour argument about workers’ rights that really matter, to millions of working people and the trade unions that represent them.
I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.
Unions do have a proper role in negotiating for employees and advising employees, but they have to engage with the employer.
I will stand with unions wholeheartedly, and that’s the problem – the Democratic Party wants to say that, but their actions do not mirror that.
I’ve commissioned an adaptation of ‘The Jungle’, by Upton Sinclair, a story of a young immigrant from Lithuania to the meat-packing industry of Chicago in 1904, and the rise of the unions in America.
Unions have been under attack for quite some time, and I think a lot of the jobs that we need to create in this country need to be union jobs. People want to be able to get a job that they can rely on to feed their family and pay their bills.
I will strengthen our unions and our middle-class families so that no longer will they be pushed around by employers but will finally have a seat at the table.
The real bottom line is, the national unions want their hands on the money.
I’ve been reading a lot about Silicon Valley history recently and was struck by just how core the lack of unions has been to the American tech industry’s evolution. It’s enabled the constant creative destruction that keeps Silicon Valley relevant and thriving in a rapidly changing world.
I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative.
If Labour ends up on the scrapheap of history, it will do so because of its own foolishness and self-inflicted wounds. What party in its right mind would allow a combination of far-left enemies, militant trade unions and first-time supporters to decide its fate?
I was for civil unions and believed strongly that the flow of benefits and protections that would be provided in a civil union for same-sex couples, the decisions that have to be made, when health hardships are faced, when economic hardships are faced, I wanted all of those protections. I never strayed from them.
I’m prepared to fight as hard as I can against unions entering the University on behalf of our students.
I’ve always had a very positive relationship with the municipal labor unions – a respectful relationship.
My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.
We plan to pick up another five seats in the Senate and hold the House through redistricting through 2012. And rather than negotiate with the teachers’ unions and the trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to break them.
Under Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., there was a rewriting of the basic rules of capitalism. These two governments changed the rules governing labour bargaining, weakening trade unions, and they weakened anti-trust enforcement, allowing more monopolies to be created.
The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.
Public unions are big money.
Numerous studies have shown income inequality growing since the late 1970s. Real earnings have fallen for many families, with globalization, the decline of unions and technological innovations eroding workers’ wages.
