This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress.
The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.
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.
Having spent a number of my younger years with trade-union parents attending NUT annual conferences, I feel comfortable with an agenda in my hand and a procedural format for debate.
People with banking experience haven't all flocked to the biggest banks; community banks and regional banks, along with smaller trading houses and credit unions, have some very talented people.
I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me.
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.
Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.
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.
Yes, I think it's really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalitional relationship with the trade union movement.
These latter institutions [the civil service, trade unions, media of all kinds], notably of course television, but more subtly the written press, are quite spectacular powers of unreason and ignorance.
At Leeds the idea of an international labour organization appeared in a trade-union text which also drew attention to the danger to the working classes inherent in the existence of international capitalist competition.
The trade unions, far from being content with these declarations, established international liaisons and supported every policy based on pacification and understanding.
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.
And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?
The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the st...
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 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.
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.
Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever.
My father got a trade union scholarship to Oxford; he lived and breathed politics; he was always watching current-affairs programmes. But I have a five-year-old child's attitude towards the news. Mainly, that it absolutely turns me off.
