Top 19 Trade Union Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Trade Union Quotes from famous people such as Jez Butterworth, Bob Hawke, Leon Jouhaux, Saffron Burrows, John McDonnell, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

My father got a trade union scholarship to Oxford; he l

My father got a trade union scholarship to Oxford; he lived and breathed politics; he was always watching current-affairs programmes. But I have a five-year-old child’s attitude towards the news. Mainly, that it absolutely turns me off.
Jez Butterworth
There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn’t have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement.
Bob Hawke
On completion of my military service, I went back to the factory and to the trade union.
Leon Jouhaux
I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me.
Saffron Burrows
To be effective in tackling poverty wages, a living wage has to be mandatory and basic trade union rights should be restored so workers can protect themselves from exploitative employers.
John McDonnell
Yes, I think it’s really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalitional relationship with the trade union movement.
Angela Davis
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.
Henry George
The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers… It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.
Samuel Gompers
Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever.
Frances O’Grady
Social Democratic and trade union organs have approved of the illegal invasion of Belgium, of the massacre of suspected guerrillas, as well as their wives and children, as well as the destruction of their homes in various towns and districts.
Clara Zetkin
I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater.
Bob Gunton
There’s people coming in who’ve never done any politics at all, who’ve never been in a trade union, they’ve never been in a political party, they’ve never done anything, but they do feel a kind of urgency.
Susan George
I think the business community is smart enough to realise that just having a trade union is not enough. They are smart enough to know they need to be part of a union that has political and financial power.
Marjorie Scardino
You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the trade union movement in parliament.
Arthur Scargill
All the evidence shows very clearly that if you are a member of a trade union you are likely to get better pay, more equal pay, better health and safety, more chance to get training, more chance to have conditions of work that help if you have caring responsibilities… the list goes on!
Frances O’Grady
The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they’re quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the streets of Britain.
Arthur Scargill
I am sure future historians will say the biggest and most astonishing change in politics has been the embracing of all the tenets of Thatcherism by the party of Keir Hardie: trade union legislation, Europe, the replacement of Trident, 10 per cent tax for people who have made millions from their companies.
Robert Harris
When I came back to India after Harvard Business School, I started as a lawyer and as a trade union leader.
P. Chidambaram
Where I come from, from a very different point of view, it’s a Labour heartland, it’s a trade union heartland, and I’ll have a very personal campaign against me there.
Esther McVey