Another issue that I encountered during my times of hardship in Vienna, was the importance and value of trade unions. When I was twenty years old I had learned to distinguish between the trade-union as a means of defending the social rights of the employees and of fighting for better living conditions for them and, on the other hand, the trade union as a political instrument used by the [Marxist]party in the “class struggle”.
I came to a firm conviction that if the activities of the trade union are directed towards improving the condition of a [working] class, which is a mainstay of the nation, and succeed in doing so, such activities are not directed against the Fatherland or the State but are, in the truest sense of the word, national.
So long as there are employers who lack social understanding and have false ideas of justice and fair play, it is not only the right, but also the duty, of their employees (who are, after all, an integral part of our people) to protect the general interests against the greed and unreason of the individual. Because it is in the interests of the nation to remove all causes of social unrest.
To safeguard the loyalty and confidence of the people is as much in the interests of the nation as to safeguard public health. Both are seriously imperiled by dishonorable employers who are not conscious of their duty as members of the national community.
[When Hitler came to power, he immediately established exactly such a trade union – German Labor Front (DAF). DAF became a tool for both achieving harmony between the interests of workers and business owners and radically improving the welfare of German workers via “Strength through Joy” and other social programs].
Within a few decades the trade-union movement was transformed, by the expert hand of Social Democracy [i.e. Marxists], from an instrument which had been originally fashioned for the defense of human rights into an instrument for the destruction of the national economic structure.
Like a threatening storm, the ‘free trade-union’ hung above the political horizon and overshadowed the life of each individual, It was one of the most frightful instruments of terror that threatened the security and independence of the national economic structure, the stability of the State and the liberty of the individual.
[This assessment was true and correct – in other countries it was even worse (in the USA many trade unions ended up being controlled by the organized crime). So on May 2nd, 1933, Adolf Hitler disbanding and outlawing all trade unions except DAF. At the time it was probably the right decision].