Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The dissolution of the trade unions was in the air then.
Trade unions are a force for good - a force for a more equal society.
Full access to the single market is what businesses and trade unions want.
Where trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the rights of the people most respected.
In the 1980s, Thatcher hacked away at our trade unions and abolished the Greater London Council.
Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.
Getting political representation is important, but change comes through using direct action, campaigning, and trade unions.
I look back at history, and some of the worst governments we've ever had, you know one of the first things they ever did? They went after the trade unions.
As I, as a worker, came to know them, the aims of German trade unions were political, and there were a number of various trade unions with varied political views.
The trade unions and the Labour Party... failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing.
The trade unions, far from being content with these declarations, established international liaisons and supported every policy based on pacification and understanding.
I would not go so far as to say that the French trade unions attached greater importance to the struggle for peace than the others did; but they certainly seemed to take it more to heart.
It is true that they paid much more attention to the trade unions because the trade unions were after all speaking for the rights and conditions of working men and women in their employment.
This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity.
The clash between capital and labour, between those seeking to maximise profit and those with only their toil to sell, was the driving force for the creation of the trade unions in the 19th century.
This constitution recognises the need for social dialogue involving labour and management; it involves trade unions in the decision-making process; it has a social vision founded on social dialogue.
The Left forces have a strong and growing presence in universities, youth organizations, and among trade unions and farmer organizations... This strength is bound to reflect in the parliamentary arena.
What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves.
In the 1980s, I had a lot of films, documentaries for television, which were about why the trade unions had failed to organize resistance to Margaret Thatcher's plans. And they were banned. I had to fight for those films.
But the question is to find and rear leaders that are really one with the masses. This can only be accomplished by the masses, the political parties and the Trade Unions, by means of the most severe struggle, also inwardly.
From a genuine living wage to a mass housebuilding programme and strong workers' and trade unions rights preventing a race to the bottom, our answers to the grievances that help drive anti-immigrant sentiment must be front and centre.
I have seen the face of this country change in 25 years or 30 years. I have seen a equalization begin to develop - in inheritance laws, tax laws, laws for favoring trade unions, protecting them, and so forth. All these are social changes.
After the rise of Thatcherism, the smashing of the trade unions, and the post-cold war sense that any alternative to free-market capitalism was permanently discredited, you can see why the wealthy felt drunk on the sense of eternal victory.
In the 1980s, the trade unions suffered a series of calamitous setbacks. Mass unemployment terrified workers into not risking the wrath of bosses. Repressive anti-union laws stunted the ability of workers to organise and defend their rights.
At school, up to the age of sixteen, I found history boring, for we were studying the Industrial Revolution, which was all about Acts, Trade Unions and the factory system, and I wanted to know about people, because it is people who make history.
Trade unions have stood at the front lines of struggles for democratic change and social justice throughout history. In many countries, we are the organized voice of oppositions to governments operating at the behest of corporate power and vested interests.
If Labour ends up on the scrapheap of history, it will do so because of its own foolishness and self-inflicted wounds. What party in its right mind would allow a combination of far-left enemies, militant trade unions and first-time supporters to decide its fate?
Well, what there ought to be is an international labor organization, a confederation of the trade unions of all the countries speaking for the workers who are competing with one another, and talking about the difference in wage levels between, say, Europe and Indonesia.
When it comes to jobs, investment, growth, security and our influence in the world we are clearly stronger in Europe. But we are also making a Labour argument about workers' rights that really matter, to millions of working people and the trade unions that represent them.
Under Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., there was a rewriting of the basic rules of capitalism. These two governments changed the rules governing labour bargaining, weakening trade unions, and they weakened anti-trust enforcement, allowing more monopolies to be created.