If you're not big enough to lose, you're not big enough to win.
Walter ReutherRead
There's a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Political and economic power are interconnected, and gains achieved through union efforts can be lost through legislation.
This quote by Walter Reuther highlights the essential relationship between political influence and economic security. It suggests that while labor unions work hard at the bargaining table to secure rights and benefits for workers, those achievements can be vulnerable to changes in laws and legislation, emphasizing the need for continuous political engagement to protect what has been gained.
Themes
PoliticsUnionLegislationWorkers' RightsPower
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on labor rights at a community meeting.
More from Walter Reuther
All quotes →There is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined in the solidarity of human brotherhood.
Walter ReutherRead
Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the national pie-labor is fighting for a larger pie.
Walter ReutherRead
Similar quotes
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
George WashingtonRead
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
As long as the government's actions are secret, it cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people.
Al GoreRead
It would seem that the Watergate story from beginning to end could be used as a primer on the American political system.
Bob WoodwardRead
Social democrats are characteristically modest - a political quality whose virtues are overestimated. We need to apologise a little less for our shortcomings and speak more assertively of achievements. That these were always incomplete should not trouble us.
Tony JudtRead
Seventy years after China emerged from the Second World War, the greatest threat facing the nation's leadership is not imperialism but skepticism.
Evan OsnosRead