Unions were relatively new in America, and Frick wasn’t about to let them take root on his watch. The Men Who Built America IV: Blood is Spilt, History 2012
Two-thousand steel workers barricaded the front of the plant to prevent Frick bringing in replacements. ibid.
The public’s outrage was escalating. ibid.
You see blokes on the picket line you’d never have dreamed would be there. And often they’re the ones who have the best ideas about what to do next.
I suppose most of the blokes still feel that this is just part of ordinary life. But I must admit for me it’s like living history. I feel that one day I’ll be telling those children’s children what it was like being in the Great Steel Strike of 1980. Tom Bartholomew
The Ministry of Labour issues a lot of statistics about the working conditions, but most of the statistics, for example statistics on working hours and the lengths of the holidays on so on, excludes the workers who work for the companies which employs less than a thirty people, and that means that about 42% of the workers are excluded from the statistics. Those are the most unprotected. Those are receiving the worst working conditions in Japan. Shigeru Wada, National Railway Workers’ Union
We don’t have unions in South Carolina because we don’t need unions in South Carolina. Nikki Haley
There was a great gulf, Mrs Thatcher believed, between the interests and views of union leaders and the people they claimed to represent. Martin Durkin, Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary, Channel 4 2013
We don’t want the union in our job. You know the way we work, innit. Alan Bleasdale, Play for Today: The Black Stuff starring Bernard Hill (Yosser) & Michael Angelis (Chrissie Todd) & Alan Igbon (Loggo Logmond) & Peter Kerrigan (George Malone) & Tom Georgeson (Dixie Dean), Dixie in van, BBC 1980
Colombia is the least safe country in the world to indulge in trade-union work. Misha Glenny, McMafia
Ninety-nine out of every hundred of them did not believe in such things as those: they had much more sense than to join Trades Unions: on the contrary, they believed in placing themselves entirely at the mercy of their good, kind Liberal and Tory masters. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Now if the union had failed, that would have affected me. But we didn’t. We fought and eventually won. We equalized the pay of men and women. We equalized the pay of secondary and elementary school teachers. We made sure that all after-school activities were, first, voluntary and, then, paid for. We fought to get more sick leave. We argued for five days for any purpose whatsoever that the individual chose. We achieved promotion by examination – as opposed to favoritism – which meant that all minorities had a fair chance. We attracted blacks to the union, and as they had increased in numbers, they moved into leadership positions. But that was years ago. Now the union is a big disappointment to me. Just become a money-grubbing organization. Pay, that’s all. What to do to educate the kids is the last thing on anybody’s mind. Big disappointment. Philip Roth, I Married a Communist
The teenager of the early seventies was made aware of the power of the unions. Every Saturday night on BBC1, Mike Yarwood did an impression of Vic Feather, general secretary of the TUC. The machinists in Mike Baldwin’s factory had a well-organized union, and the drivers from On the Buses ran rings around their inspector, Blakey. The Strawbs had a top-ten hit with Part of the Union. Cartoons in The Sun portrayed union members as huge ugly hairy men with ‘union power’ on their T-shirts. And every night on the news there was talk of a strike or what to do about the problem of strikes in general. Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful
My union card! I’ve lost my union card! The Boys 1962 starring Richard Todd & Robert Morley & Dudley Sutton & Ronald Lacey & Tony Garnett & Jess Conrad & Felix Aylmer & Wilfrid Brambell & Roy Kinnear & Allan Cuthbertson & Colin Gordon & Wensley Pithey & David Lodge & Patrick Magee & Kenneth J Warren et al, director Sidney J Furie, blokes tumble from pub
The common law has traditionally been hostile to the collective self-organisation of workers, and it is only by means of statutory intervention, in the form of ‘immunities’ from common law liability, that a space has been created within which trade unions, in particular, may operate lawfully for the purposes of collective bargaining and activities associated with it, such as the conduct of industrial action and the regulation of particular trades and occupations. Simon Deakin & Gillian S Morris, Labour Law
It was not until the ‘legislative settlement’ of the 1870s that legislation lifted the threat of criminal sanctions from all but violent forms of behaviour associated with industrial action ... but the process was not completed until the trade dispute formula was extended to cover tortious liability by the Trade Disputes Act 1906. ibid.
Judicial intervention reached that point at which trade unions were regarded as akin to public or statutory bodies whose decision-making powers were subject to judicial review on grounds of ultra vires. ibid.
After the war, the Wages Councils Act 1945 was the occasion both for the expansion of the trade boards sectors into the service sector, and for a more general attempt to place institutional wage determination on a secure footing. ibid.
It was only with the advent of employment protection legislation in the 1960s and 1970s that the industrial contract of employment came to assume the importance which it has in the modern law. ibid.
The Labour government of 1964-70 took more direct powers in the area of pay restraint. ibid.
The Labour government of 1974-1979, in common with its immediate predecessors, failed to reconcile the tension between the traditional forms of state support for voluntary collective bargaining and increasing intervention in the economy through incomes policies. ibid.
A number of means, direct and indirect, were used to undermine national bargaining. ibid.
The narrowing of immunities and the ending of the blanket immunity of trade unions from liability in tort provided employers with many more strategic options than they had previously had for breaking strike resistance, and these were put to effective use in particular disputes, such as the Wapping and Messenger disputes in the newspaper printing industry. ibid.
The capacity of the UK economy to maintain full employment has been steadily declining throughout the post-war period. ibid.
In most cultures where there are coal miners, middle-class people and above think they’re animals. Literally. And treat them that way. The Mine Wars, PBS 2016
Strangers rarely found their way into the coal camps of West Virginia. So when a matronly older woman walked into a camp one Fall morning in 1901 the local store keeper was curious … She was the notorious Mother Jones there to convince the coal miners in the region to join her union – United Mine Workers of America. ibid.
Miners in southern West-Virginia had been beaten down by the mine owners. ibid.
The largest armed insurrection since the civil war … A blood-soaked war zone. ibid.
Nearly three quarters of a million men across the country spent ten or twelve hours a day in coal mines. ibid.
There were no elected officials, no independent police forces. ibid.
They forced mining families to shop exclusively at the company store. ibid.
Thousands of West Virginia miners decided to stand with the strikers in Pennsylvania and to fight for their own rights. ibid.
The summer of 1973 was one of the roughest we’ve had. Two of our strikers were killed. Dozens of our people were beaten. Thousands were arrested and thrown in jail. And all because we dared to stand up to the growers when they made one more desperate attempt to crush our union. Fighting for Our Lives, 1975
Some of the complaints the workers were making … forcing workers to sign cards … ‘We believe in justice for farmworkers’ … Our union was the United Farm Workers. ibid.
The effort of farmworkers to unionise themselves is not a recent effort – it’s been going on for 85 years in this state. ibid.
When we tried to reach the workers from outside the fields they drowned out our loudspeakers … Once we were in the labour camps they’d kick us out. ibid.
The growers called in the Teamsters … A whole group of Teamsters attacked our picket line. ibid.
58 different court orders … the arrest of 3,538 of our brothers and sisters. ibid.
They [police] beat the hell out of them. ibid. union guy
And take our cause to the people. ibid.
The Koch brothers have given more than $22 million to think tanks, politicians and Alec to pass anti-union legislation. Koch Brothers Exposed, 2014
We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers’ salaries and take away their right to strike. Adolf Hitler