Business often does
a good job supporting communities: the arts, universities, and scientific enterprises...
But that philosophy has rarely reached poor countries. Even businesses that are
enlightened in their home bases see Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia as
places to exploit natural resources or use cheap labor.
-- Jeffrey
Sachs | 
|
You
take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.
-- William Shakespeare
"Labour was the first price,
the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold
or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased."
-- Adam Smith
*
...180 million kids are engaged in the worst forms of child labour. Put it all
together and it is not only morally unacceptable, but politically dangerous.
-- Juan Somavia *
Decent
work is at the heart of the search for dignity for the individual, stability for
the family and peace in the community
-- Juan
Somavia | 
|
What
we need is political leadership which can give guidance to the development of
global governance. We need business leadership which goes beyond shareholder value
to understand the needs and fears of other stakeholders and their communities.
--
Juan Somavia
Nearly
one billion women and men, a third of the world‘s workforce, are either unemployed
or unable to earn enough to keep themselves out of extreme poverty. There are
100 million new entrants into the labour market each year. Up to 90 percent in
some regions are in the informal economy. 180 million kids are engaged in the
worst forms of child labour. Put it all together and it is not only morally unacceptable,
but politically dangerous
-- Juan
Somavia
Labour markets are about people. And people have a right to be treated with dignity
and respect.
-- Juan
Somavia
A
key issue in managing globalization is therefore how we organise the global investmentand
labour markets to meet the needs of flexibility for enterprises, security for
workers and quality for consumers. We need new proactive policies that focus directly
on how authorities in the public and private sphere can blend economic and social
policies with an enabling environment for private initiative to create market
opportunities for Decent Work.
-- Juan
Somavia
"Without
labor nothing prospers."
-- Sophocles
When
we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to
catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality
in about 475 years. I don't know about you, but I can't wait that long.
--
Lya Sorano
I
am weary seeing our laboring classes so wretchedly housed, fed, and clothed, while
thousands of dollars are wasted every year over unsightly statues. If these great
man must have outdoor memorials, let them be in the form of handsome blocks of
buildings for the poor
--
Elizabeth Cady Stanton | 
|
 |
No man can call himself
liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work
depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the
office.
-- Gloria
Steinem |
Today
I send this message to every emerging global corporation: "justice; family, community,
and union" are the same in every language and, wherever you go and whatever you
do, a new global labor movement is coming to find you.
-- Andy Stern, SEIU
President
We
can bring to earth a new world from the ashes of the old because our union transforms
us the powerless into the powerful. And I ask you to join together in using all
that power--all that strength to make the dreams of all workers and communities
around the world come true.
-- Andy Stern, SEIU President
| 
|
*
"I
am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals
were liberators—they fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote,
fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid.
Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's
to be ashamed of?"
-- Barbra
Streisand |
What
is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits
of the labor of the underclass.
-- August Strindberg, 1884
When
fewer workers have unions, the standard of living falls for everyone and the gap
between the rich and poor grows.
-- John Sweeney, 2003
As
it has over the decades, the union movement stands for the fundamental moral values
that make America strong: quality education for our children, affordable health
care for every person—not just some—an end to poverty, secure pensions and wages
that enable families to sustain the middle-class life that has fueled this nation’s
prosperity and strength. Union members and other working family activists don’t
just vote our moral values—we live them. We fight for them, day in, day out. Our
commitment to economic and social justice propels us and everything we do.
-- John Sweeney, November 2004
We
should measure the success of our economy by the breadth of our Middle Class and
the scope of opportunity offered to the poorest child to climb into that Middle
Class.
-- John Sweeney
It
is time that all Americans realized that the place of labor is side by side with
the businessman and with the farmer, and not one-degree lower.
-- Harry S
Truman
In
an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing
has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
-- Raoul Vaneigem
"Labor
wants also pride and joy in doing good work, a sense of making or doing something
beautiful or useful - to be treated with dignity and respect as brother and sister"
-- Thorstein Veblen
|
We desire peace - and that is why we have never resorted to physical force. We
crave for justice - and that is why we are so persistent in the struggle for our
rights. We seek freedom of convictions - and that is why we have never attempted
to enslave man's conscience, nor shall we ever attempt to do so. We are fighting
for the right of the working people to association and for the dignity of human
labor. We respect the dignity and the rights of every man and every nation. The
path to a brighter future of the world leads through honest reconciliation of
the conflicting interests and not through hatred and bloodshed. To follow that
path means to enhance the moral power of the all-embracing idea of human solidarity.
-- Lech Walesa
| 
|
Labor
in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital,
but capital solicits the aid of labor.
-- Daniel Webster
| 
|
*
A
downtrodden class... will never be able to make an effective protest until it
achieves solidarity.
-- H.G.
Wells |
*
While
we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free.
-- Woodrow Wilson |
|
*
If
capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men have a right to capitalize their
ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men to
capitalize their labor.
-- Frank
Lloyd Wright |
|
| *
The
strike, the boycott, the refusal to serve, the ability to paralyze the functioning
of a complex social structure-these remain potent weapons against the most fearsome
state or corporate power.
-- Howard
Zinn |  |
Labor
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