Top 15 Trade Union Quotes

In this post, you will find great Trade Union Quotes from famous people, such as Bob Hawke, Clara Zetkin, Angela Davis, Frances O’Grady, Marjorie Scardino. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.

There is no doubt that this government and this country

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.

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.

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.

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

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

On completion of my military service, I went back to the factory and to the trade union.

Leon Jouhaux

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.

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

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

Henry George

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.

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

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

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.

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