Labor Quotes

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Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time. -- Grace Abbott The first and continuing argument for the curtailment of working hours and the raising of the minimum age was that education was necessary in a democracy and working children could not attend school. -- Grace Abbott

When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money.
-- Alice Adams

Union gives strength.
-- Aesop

Today, although there are still sweatshops and other inhumane working conditions for many workers around the world, the labor movement has won numerous victories that many of us take for granted, such as the 5-day work week, 8-hour work day, paid holidays and the end of child labor. -- Robert Alan

Power goes to two poles -- to those who've got the money and those who've got the people. -- Saul Alinksy

"As labor creates the wealth of the country, we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights." -- John Peter Altgeld

This is the spirit that is back of all the great struggles of the workers to improve their working conditions. Liberty and freedom for collective bargaining is what they want and what they must have. -- Mary Anderson Equal pay for women is a matter of simple justice. -- Mary Anderson

Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work. -- Susan B. Anthony

In Unity there is strength; We can move mountains when we're united and enjoy life --Without unity we are victims. Stay united.
-- Bill Bailey

We are not complaining about the work. We want to see our hard work reflected in our pay.
-- Emmett J. Bogdon

How are we going to make our livings in a society becoming increasingly jobless because of hi-tech and outsourcing? Where will we get the imagination to recognize that for most of human history the concept of Jobs didn’t even exist? Work, as distinguished from Labor, was done to produce needed goods and services, develop skills and artistry, and nurture cooperation. -- Grace Lee Boggs

The best of wages will not compensate for excessively long working hours which undermine heath.
-- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

The most important word in the language of the working class is "solidarity."
-- Harry Bridges

* “We are asking people to understand that slavery still exists today; in fact, according to a recent New York Times article, if you count the number of women and children in bonded labor, domestic slavery or sexual slavery today, there are more slaves in the world than at any other time in history.” -- Charlotte Bunch

 

The quality of employees will be directly proportional to the quality of life you maintain for them.
-- Charles E. Bryan

The role of a labor union is to ensure that the balance is not tipped in favor of the employer when employees do not receive wages and benefits commensurate with their contribution.
-- William Burrus

The history of America has been largely created by the deeds of its working people and their organizations--there is scarcely an issue that is not influenced by labor’s organized efforts or lack of them.
-- William Cahn, Labor historian

Every advance in this half-century-Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, aid to education, one after another-came with the support and leadership of American Labor. -- Jimmy Carter

The strength of the movement is still something that you will never see on camera, because it doesn't happen at the big protests. But the strength of this movement is rooted in the strength of its components and of the campaigns of its components. So there are farm movements around the world; there are environmental movements around the world; labor movements around the world involved in daily struggles around living wages, around protecting the rights of farmers to their seeds, and so on. Those struggles continue on a daily basis; they have not gone away. -- John Cavanagh

Management doesn't seem to understand the importance of the human factor.
-- Charles, Prince of Wales

The people united will never be defeated. -- Cesar Chavez The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people. -- Cesar Chavez We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. -- Cesar Chavez

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses. -- Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm

Labor Unions are the leading force for democratization and progress. -- Noam Chomsky

The only thing workers have to bargain with is their skill or their labor. Denied the right to withhold it as a last resort, they become powerless. The strike is therefore not a breakdown of collective bargaining-it is the indispensable cornerstone of that process.
-- Paul Clark

If you object to unfair treatment, you're an ingrate. If you seek equity and fair consideration, you're uppity. If you demand union security, you're un-American. If you rebel against repressive management tactics, they will lynch and scalp you. But if you are passive and patient, they will take advantage of both.
-- Congressman William Clay, Sr.

"The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor"
-- William Cobbett

"This is the first great problem of modern democracy...how to get a fair living by reasonable hours of work leaving enough leisure for both childhood and manhood." -- John R. Commons

The superior person understands rightness; the inferior person understands profit.
-- Confucius

There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right. -- Bill Cosby

Plato told Aristotle no one should make more than five times the pay of the lowest member of society. J.P. Morgan said 20 times. Jesus advocated a negative differential -- that's why they killed him.
-- Graef Crystal

 

Labor Quotes

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LABOR
HERO PIX

Abraham Lincoln | David A. Morse | Frances Perkins |
Franklin D. Roosevelt | Aruna Roy

Workers Day - May 1
Labor Day - 1st Mon in September

More LABOR Quotes