James P. Hoffa's Quotes

We've got to keep an eye on the battle that we face - a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. And there's only one way to beat and win that war - the one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.

We didn't start this war - the right wing did. We're tired of seeing good-paying jobs shipped overseas. This fight is about the economy, it's about jobs and it's about rebuilding America.

I will never apologize for standing up for my fellow Teamsters and all American workers.

What's going on in this country? Unions stand against those trends. We've got to somehow insulate the robust American economy from this global economy that seems to want to devour our standard of living.

And some of those people that voted Republican are now going to say, what a mistake I made because I didn't know they were going to take my job away. I didn't know they were going to take collective bargaining away.

We vote - if the public votes 50 percent, we vote 70 percent. So we have a bigger impact with our numbers, and the organization and the manpower we can bring to a race.

If we're all together, we have money, and we start to organize, you're going to see the Teamsters Union start to bloom.

It's a success story here in Michigan. We have hiring going on. We have new industries going on.

That's what unions do. They can get money, they can get support, they can get manpower.

The mob's not coming back in the Teamsters Union. We've gotten rid of them, and we're free to be free of government supervision.

This is just the beginning of a new era for America's workers.

Congress has turned its back on America's working families. There are Teamster families in every congressional district in America, and those families vote. Those who would oppose these families have done so at their own political peril.

This union has been divided in like a civil war - brother against brother - sister against sister. And I'm pulling it together. We've already seen evidence of that in New York, in Pennsylvania, in California. The first thing is we have to get on the same page. We have to be united in one cause.

Today we are united, strong and on the move. Today we have a strong strike fund. Today we have the resources to run large-scale organizing campaigns against global employers. Today we have $100 million in the bank.

We have to get very militant with some of these employers to say there's no shortcuts, our people have a right to a fair day's wage for a fair day's pay, and we've got to get that done. And that's going to happen.

We must have more union members in this country to fight the political and business forces that are undermining workers in this country. The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach by planning to throw even more money at politicians.

We're going to be very strong with employers in all of our aspects, because I think there's been too much of this idea let's try and get along here, and we've eroded some of our standards.