"All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) 12th U.S. President.
"What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails, more books and less arsenals, more learning and less vice, more constant work and less crime, more leisure and less greed, more justice and less revenge. In fact more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful and childhood more happy and bright."
Samuel Gompers
" . . . Workers have a right to organize into unions and to bargain collectively with their employers, and . . . a strong, free labor movement is an invigorating and necessary part of our industrial society."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The American labor movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all America. Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor--those who cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized--do a disservice to the cause of democracy."
John F. Kennedy
"Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor. But their work goes beyond their own job, and even beyond our borders. For the labor movement is people. Our unions have brought millions of men and women together . . . and given them common tools for common goals. Their goals are goals for all America--and their enemies are enemies of progress. The two cannot be separated."
John F. Kennedy
"I know that the American labor movement wants for America what I want for America: the elimination of poverty and unemployment, the reestablishment of America's position of leadership in the world, the end of racial discrimination everywhere in our society. I know the American labor movement opposes what I oppose: complacency, unemployment, economic stagnation, and national insecurity. I believe in the things the labor movement believes in and fights for."
John F. Kennedy
"Today in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice. I have no use for those -- regardless of their political party -- who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Whatever their faults, unions have been the only powerful and effective voice working people have ever had in the history of this country."
Bruce Springsteen
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of
labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is
the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) 12th U.S. President. Message to Congress, 3 Dec 1861
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