When we created the Center for American Progress in 2002, the left really only had single-issue groups, like labor unions, and think tanks, like the Economic Policy Institute, that did particular issues. There weren't ideologically based organizations.

Thousands of Americans are forced to join unions as a condition of employment, with little to no chance of ever having their voices heard.

I love creating partnerships; I love not having to bear the entire burden of the creative storytelling, and when I have unions like with George Lucas and Peter Jackson, it's really great; not only do I benefit, but the project is better for it.

I was for civil unions and believed strongly that the flow of benefits and protections that would be provided in a civil union for same-sex couples, the decisions that have to be made, when health hardships are faced, when economic hardships are faced, I wanted all of those protections. I never strayed from them.

Now, I learned soon enough, that among the three, two don't trust the third one - the third one is the government. Both industry and unions feel the government is a talking organization and a spending organization.

My problem with unions is they breed mediocrity.

I oppose any attempt to grant homosexual unions the same legal privileges that civil government affords to traditional marriage and family life.

The unions still have a job to do, representing their members' interests to governments and parliaments. And I think collective agreements still have a role, alongside markets and laws.

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.

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.

The time has come to tell the truth about the corruption of the government employee unions in this country.

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.

Carl Icahn told me to stay away from airlines. In good times, the unions take away the profits, and in bad times, the cost of oil kills you.

We - again, the, the, the, the bastardization and the demonization over the last few years of teachers and of unions and of collective bargaining, that is not the answer.

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

Unions are the result of profit seekers. Unions are the way the average guy gets even with evil corporateers. The unions are godsends. The unions have a special status, because they represent the rising up of the average man against the evil corporateers and profiteers.

At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to hold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions, comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence.

Unionism seldom, if ever, uses such power as it has to insure better work; almost always it devotes a large part of that power to safeguarding bad work.

With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.

There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.