Labor Leaders

"I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in our country—a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society."

"I would rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the victims of racism, and working people seeking a better life than with those whose religion is the status quo, whose goal is profit and whose hearts are cold."

"We want a better America, an America that will give its citizens, first of all, a higher and higher standard of living so that no child will cry for food in the midst of plenty. We want to have an America where the inventions of science will be at the disposal of every American family, not merely for the few that can afford them. An America that will have no sense of insecurity and which will make it possible for all groups, regardless of race, creed, or color to live in friendship, to be real neighbors; an an America that will carry its great mission of helping other countries to help themselves, thinking not in terms of exploitation, but of creating plenty abroad so we can all enjoy it here in America."

"Unions were created to make living conditions just a little better than they were before they were created, and the union that does not manifest that kind of interest in human beings cannot endure, it cannot live."

"At least one time in adulthood, on the other hand, Hoffa claimed just seven school grades."

"There are simply no public figures today who so challenge the elite business and government establishment and so champion the working class as Jimmy Hoffa did almost daily and with arrogance."

"From 1955 until 1965 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as Elvis Presley. From 1965 until 1975 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as the Beatles."

"I'll be back."

"I've said consistently that no employer ever really accepts a union. They tolerate the unions. The very minute they can get a pool of unemployment they'll challenge the unions and try to get back what they call managements prerogatives, meaning hire, fire, pay what you want."

"When you go to prison they forget it's your Constitution, too."

"Our rooms were bugged, our phones were tapped, and our lawyer's rooms were broken into and their files stolen. We finally had to hire armed guards with pistols to be able to maintain our records. It was hard to believe we weren't in Russia."

"Hell, I'm not saying I'm an angel, but when it came to dirty tricks I couldn't hold a candle to the Irish Mafia."

"But to hear Kennedy when he was grandstanding in front of the McClellan Committee you might have thought I was making as much out of the pension fund as the Kennedys made out of selling whiskey."

"Sure, we loaned money to build hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. So what? Las Vegas borrowers were good customers."

"It has to be considered damned unusual that no other union was ever investigated."

"Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too."

"I let him strain for a couple of seconds. Then like taking candy from a baby, I flipped his arm over and cracked his knuckles on the top of the table. It was strictly no contest and he knew it. But he had to try again. Same results."

"We never had any silk sheets in our family..."

"Mob guys had muscle, and where in hell do you think employers got the tough guys when they wanted to break a strike?"

"A slab of bread "buttered" with lard and, if you were lucky, seasoned with salt and pepper, was a luxury."

"You almost had to live through it to really know the gut ripping misery of the depression during the early thirties which led to labor's bloodiest and most violent days."

"They all know I'm back, very much back, and that I will be the general president again come hell or high water."

"When you run an organization like the Teamsters one man has to be the boss and run things."

"In the ten years I was president of the Teamsters, I had raised the membership from eight hundred thousand to more than 2 million and made it the largest single labor union the world."

"I do to others what they do to me, only worse."

"But because we are financially solid, because we do have an organization that is equipped to handle any situation that comes in front of us, we are successful in getting from the employers what our members want and need without strikes."

"Nobody in this country respects what's weak. You believe me! If you see a beggar on a corner, with his hat in his hand, nobody respects him. Dress the same man up, give him an air of dignity, and he can command respect. The same thing applies to this union."

"He's not just the most powerful man in labor," Robert Kennedy had said in the wake of Hoffa's announcement; "he's the most powerful man in the country, next to the President."

"More apparent to Teamster members than any moral lapses were the tangible gains that had been steadily realized under Hoffa since his advent to power."

"No more than one third of his working time, indeed, was spent in his office."

"I have seen the Mississippi. That is muddy water. I have seen the Saint Lawrence. That is clear water. But the Thames is liquid history."

"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."

"Jack Reed and I went to Chicago to cover the trial of the I.W.W. leaders before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. They, too, stood accused of interfering with enlist- ment. Bill Haywood and 100 other "Wobblies" were the defendants-speakers, organizers, editors, corralled by a dragnet covering many states. One of the offenses of this organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, was that it had persisted in striking for decent wages and better working conditions even in war-time-while the American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, had in effect called a truce in its conflicts with employers and had tamely gone with the wind of war propaganda."

"Subsequently I learned from the Free Federation officials that the last outside speaker from the American Federation of Labor at a convention had been Samuel Gompers, in 1914. They showed me a copy of his address. It was a masterly exposition of conditions-clear-cut, militant. With only a change of date, what Gompers said in 1914 would have applied equally to the situation in 1934. I was sorry I had not seen that speech before-I would have asked leave to read it to the convention. It was as fundamental, I thought, as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address."

"Employers welcomed the influx of cheap, exploitable labor, but labor organizations like the AFL, then led by xenophobic president Samuel Gompers (who had also lobbied for the Chinese Exclusion Act), resisted what they saw as an invasion of low-skilled competition for (white) American jobs. The AFL ceased its work with majority-Latino unions in the Southwest, and refused to organize Latino workers for decades afterward. Thanks to pernicious anti-immigrant rhetoric echoing out from politicians, unions, and the media, Mexican workers were met with racism, xenophobia, and violence, scorned for "taking American jobs," and enthusiastically exploited by employers."

"Anti-Chinese associations sprang up and were supported by labor leaders like Workingmen's Party leader Denis Kearney and AFL president Samuel Gompers, who blamed Chinese immigrants for lowering wages and labor standards. Foreshadowing the rhetoric that would later be used against Mexican and Latin American immigrants, these lions of labor used their platforms to rail against the "Chinese invasion" for snatching jobs away from white American workers (though in fact, Chinese laborers generally performed the most hazardous jobs and were paid less than white workers because white employers knew they could get away with it)."

"(Today labor is often looked at as merely an arbiter for wages and benefits. Do you think labor leaders today have defined the mission of the labor movement too narrowly?) That is not new, that was started under Samuel Gompers who said that the purpose of the labor movement was "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." But you can't separate the worker and the community."

"The unionization of women, even in occupations like the needle trades where they predominated, had scarcely yet begun. Equal opportunities, equal pay, and the right to be organized, were the crying needs of women wage-earners then and unfortunately these demands remain with us today. Many union leaders, like Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, did not consider women workers organizable or dependable. "They only work for pin mon-ey" was the usual complaint. An outside job was considered by the woman worker herself as a temporary necessary evil-a stop-gap between her father's home and her husband's home. Fathers and husbands collected women's wages, sometimes right at the company office. Women did not have a legal right to their own earnings. There was no consideration for the special needs and problems of working mothers, though they were numerous and pressing. Even the clothes of women hampered them-the long skirts that touched the ground, the big unwieldy sleeves, the enormous hats. You were still "a girl" if your skirt was above your shoe tops."

"Gompers, the Bosses’ Friend."

"The reactionaries were not the only element responsible for the patriotic orgy. Sam Gompers handed over the American Federation of Labor to the war baiters."

"We feel as if we were hard labor convicts where everything but our feeding has been made subject to iron rules. We have become lost as human beings, and have been turned into slaves."

"[The labor movement is] a movement of the working people, for the working people, by the working people, governed by ourselves, with its policies determined by ourselves..."

"In many instances the conduct of colored workmen, and those who have spoken for them, has not been in asking or demanding that equal rights be accorded to them as to white workmen, but somehow conveying the idea that they are to be petted and coddled and given special consideration and special privilege. Of course that can't be done."

"As far as is possible under the ruthless tyranny the organized labor of [Soviet] Russia is everywhere in a state of full revolt."

"The Soviet scheme of compulsory labor is being applied on such a broad scale and is so boldly presented as a ‘proletarian’ scheme that it constitutes the gravest danger that has confronted labor for centuries."

"And what have our unions done? What do they aim to do? To improve the standard of life, to uproot ignorance and foster education, to instill character, manhood and independent spirit among our people; to bring about a recognition of the interdependence of man upon his fellow man. We aim to establish a normal work-day, to take the children from the factory and workshop and give them the opportunity of the school and the play-ground. In a word, our unions strive to lighten toil, educate their members, make their homes more cheerful, and in every way contribute an earnest effort toward making life the better worth living."

"There are about 8,000,000 negroes in the United States, and, my friends, I not only have not the power to put the negro out of the labor movement, but I would not, even if I did have the power. Why should I do such a thing? I would have nothing to gain, but the movement would have much to lose. Under our policies and principles we seek to build up the labor movement, instead of injuring it, and we want all the negroes we can possibly get who will join hands with organized labor."

"What does labor want? We want more school houses and less jails. More books and less guns. More learning and less vice. More leisure and less greed. More justice and less revenge. We want more … opportunities to cultivate our better natures."

"The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit."

"No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion. If we seek to force, we but tear apart that which united, is invincible. There is no way whereby our labor movement may be assured sustained progress in determining its policies and its plans other than sincere democratic deliberation until a unanimous decision is reached. This may seem a cumbrous, slow method to the impatient, but the impatient are more concerned for immediate triumph than for the education of constructive development."