Labor Strike Quotes

“In April 2001, a student group called the Progressive Student Labor Movement took over the offices of the university’s president, demanding a living wage for Harvard janitors and food workers. That spring, a daily diversion on the way to class was to see which national figure—Cornel West or Ted Kennedy one day, John Kerry or Robert Reich another—had turned up in the Yard to encourage the protesters.

Striding past the protesters and the politicians addressing them, on my way to a “Pizza and Politics” session with a journalist like Matt Bai or a governor like Howard Dean, I did not guess that the students poised to have the greatest near-term impact were not the social justice warriors at the protests […] but a few mostly apolitical geeks who were quietly at work in Kirkland House”
― Pete Buttigieg, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future

“The workers stayed in the plant instead of walking out, and this had clear
advantages: they were directly blocking the use of strikebreakers; they
did not have to act through union officials but were in direct control
of the situation themselves; they did not have to walk outside in the
cold and rain, but had shelter; they were not isolated, as in their work,
or on the picket line; they were thousands under one roof, free to
talk to one another, to form a community of struggle. Louis Adamic,
a labor writer, describes one of the early sit-downs:

Sitting by their machines, cauldrons, boilers and work benches, they talked.
Some realized for the first time how important they were in the process of
rubber production. Twelve men had practically stopped the works! . . . Superintendents, foremen, and straw bosses were dashing about. . . . In less than
an hour the dispute was settled, full victory for the men.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“If retail giants are claiming shortages on the first day of a strike, it's obvious they are using the situation as an opportunity to raise prices and increase profits.”
― Carlos Wallace, Why Sell Lies When The Truth Is Free