|
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 Silverstein
|
 |
 |
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
|
|
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
|
|
|
*
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
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 men, than any other association of men.
-- Clarence Darrow
|
|
*
Well,
we see an increasingly weaker labor movement as
a result of the overall assault on the labor movement
and as a result of the globalization of capital.
-- Angela
Davis
|
 |
*
labor
is today the most vital and potential power this
planet has ever known, and its historic mission
is as certain of ultimate realization as is the
setting of the sun.
-- Eugene
V. Debs
Ten
thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and
bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts,
assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced
by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and
deceived by politicians. 'But notwithstanding all
this and all these, labor is today the most vital
and potential power this planet has ever known,
and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate
realization as is the setting of the sun.
-- Eugene
V. Debs
|
You
have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same
political party and strike and vote together, and the
hour you do that, the world is yours.
-- Eugene
V. Debs
What
can Labor do for itself? The answer is not difficult.
Labor can organize, it can unify; it can consolidate its
forces. This done, it can demand and command.
-- Eugene
V. Debs
If
CEOs insist that middle class Americans compete with cheap
foreign labor, why not outsource the jobs of CEOs? If
business is all about cost, they should be the first to
volunteer.
-- Lou Dobbs
The
fact is whether one looks at this [outsourcing] in terms
of men and women, working men and women in this country
who are simply being screwed, or whether one looks at
this in terms of corporations who are benefiting, the
fact is it is certainly not helping the American economy.
-- Lou Dobbs
The
only effective answer to organized greed is organized
labor.
--Thomas Donahue
|
|
*
People
might not get all that they work for in this world,
but they must certainly work for all that they get.
-- Frederick
Douglass
|
Business
knows no pity, and cares for justice only when justice
is seen to be better policy. If it had power to control
the elements, it would grasp in its iron clutches the
waters, sunshine and air and resell them by measure, and
at exorbitant prices to the millions of famished men,
women and children.
-- W.A. Duncan, in the Cherokee Advocate, 1892
Labor
rights are as fundamental as human rights and the job
of a democratic country is to protect both.
-- Tony Ehreneich
|
*
Only
a fool would try to deprive working men and working
women of their right to join the union of their
choice.
-- Dwight
D. Eisenhower
|
|
Today
in America, unions have a secure place in our industrial
life. Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly
thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and
women of the right to join the union of their choice.
I have no use for those -- regardless of their political
party -- who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning
the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled,
almost as a hapless mass. Only a fool would try to deprive
working men and women of the right to join the union of
their choice.
-- Dwight
D. Eisenhower
To
the fervent proponents of ruthless corporate capitalism
I say: make a millionaire CEO live as a poor sweatshop
worker in Indonesia for one month and then ask him about
the merits of the world economic system.
-- Vassilis Epaminondou
If
the workers of the world want to win, all they have to
do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing
to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The
workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets
than all the property of the capitalists. . . .
-- Joseph Ettor, IWW organizer
What
is a labour victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing.
Workers must gain economic advantage, but they must also
gain revolutionary spirit, in order to achieve a complete
victory. For workers to gain a few cents more a day, a
few minutes less a day, and go back to work with the same
psychology, the same attitude toward society is to achieve
a temporary gain and not a lasting victory.
-- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
History
has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern
judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered,
were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political
oppression and economic slavery.
-- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
|
|
*
There
are two kinds of people, those who do the work and
those who take the credit. Try to be in the first
group; there is less competition there.
-- Indira Gandhi
|
|
*
To
a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers
hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the
power that a worker has against the corporation.
Right-wingers hate that.
-- Janeane
Garofalo
Without
liberals we wouldn't have unions. We wouldn't have
environmental protections. We wouldn't have seat
belts or birth control or the ACLU! Any of these
things!
-- Janeane
Garofalo
|
|
"Poorly
paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over"
-- Henry George
|
*
"What
does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less
jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning
and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more
justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities
to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood
more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood
more happy and bright."
-- Samuel
Gompers
|
|
You
can't do it unless you organize.
-- Samuel
Gompers
The
man who has his millions will want everything he can lay
his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor
devil who wants ten cents more a day. . . . We do want
more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more.
And we shall never cease to demand more until we have
received the results of our labor.
-- Samuel
Gompers
Our
movement is of the working people, for the working people,
by the working people. . . . There is not a right too
long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve;
there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not
determined to abolish.
-- Samuel
Gompers
Where
trade unions are most firmly organized, there are the
rights of the people most respected.
-- Samuel
Gompers
Never
forget, people DIED for the eight hour workday.
-- Rebecca Gordon
If
the workers are organized, all they have to do is to put
their hands in their pockets and they have got the capitalist
class whipped.
-- William Dudley "Big Bill" Haywood
|
|
*
Don't
waste any time in mourning - organize.
-- Joe
Hill
If
the workers took a notion they could stop all
speeding trains; Every ship upon the ocean they
can tie with mighty chains. Every wheel in the
creation, every mine and every mill; Fleets and
armies of the nation, will at their command stand
still.
-- Joe
Hill
I
have nothing to say for myself, only that I have
always tried to make this earth a little bit better.
-- Joe
Hill
|
We
want a better America, an America that will give its citizens,
first of all, a higher and higher standard of living so
that no child will cry for food in the midst of plenty.
-- Sidney Hillman
|
*
Every
man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others,
no matter if he occupies a throne.
~ Robert
G. Ingersoll
|
 |
|
*
Although
it is true that only about 20 percent of American
workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the
standards across the board in salaries, benefits
and working conditions. If you are making a decent
salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the
unions. One thing that corporations do not do is
give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
-- Molly
Ivins
|
 |
I
am convinced that if the members of labor organizations
would follow some of the tactics of the employers organizations
their movement could more successfully withstand its opponents
and to progress as it has in the past. But if we are to
be successful we must have, above all things, more loyalty
and less selfishness.
-- Charles E. James, African-American Union leader, 1907
|
|
A
wise and frugal government, which shall leave men
free to regulate their own pursuits of industry
and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth
of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum
of good government.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
|
|
*
My
friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do
not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify
our forces and say to each other: "We must be together;
our masters are joined together and we must do the
same thing." -- Mother
Jones
I
know that there are no limits to which the powers
of privilege will not go to keep the workers in
slavery -- Mother
Jones
What
one state could not get alone, what one miner against
a powerful corporation could not achieve, can be
achieved by the union.
-- Mother
Jones
|
|
I
want you to pledge to yourselves in this convention to
stand as one solid army against the foes of human labor.
Think of the thousands who are killed every year and there
is no redress for it. We will fight until the mines are
made secure and human life valued more than props. Look
things in the face. Don't' fear a governor; don't fear
anybody. You pay the governor; he has the right to protect
you. You are the biggest part of the population in the
state. You create its wealth, so I say, "let the fight
go on; if nobody else will keep on, I will."
-- Mother
Jones, 1913
|
|
*
“We
have words for racism and sexism, but wealth discrimination
isn’t fully recognized. It is a bias in favor
of the wealthy and against labor, the environment,
and the community. Concern for the public good
must become the animating force of our economic
order.”
-- Marjorie
Kelly
|
No
one who works for a living should live in poverty.
-- Senator Edward Kennedy
|
|
*
The
American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated
its devotion to the public interest. It is, and
has been, good for all America.
-- John
F. Kennedy
|
Our
labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They
have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental
benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance
procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to
the shop floor.
-- John
F. Kennedy
|
In
our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard
against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.'
It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose
is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective
bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped.
-- Martin
Luther King, Jr.
*
"All
labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."
-- Martin
Luther King, Jr.
|
|
More
men are killed by overwork than the importance of the
world justifies.
-- Rudyard Kipling
If
hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich
would have kept it all to themselves.
-- Lane Kirkland
Human
history is work history. The heroes of the people are
work heroes.
-- Meridel Le Sueur
|
|
*
Let
the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble.
Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices
and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful
citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor
is the future of America.
-- John
L. Lewis
Labor
was marching toward the goal of industrial democracy
and contributing constructively toward a more
rational arrangement of our domestic economy.
--
John
L. Lewis
|
The
labor movement is organized upon a principle that the
strong shall help the weak. The strength of a strong man
is a prideful thing, but the unfortunate thing in life
is that strong men do not remain strong. And it is just
as true of unions and labor organizations as is true of
men and individuals. And whereas today the craft unions
of this country may be able to stand upon their own feet
and like mighty oaks stand before the gale, defy the lightning,
yet the day may come when those organizations will not
be able to withstand the lightning and the gale. Now,
prepare yourselves by making a contribution to your less
fortunate brethren... Organize the unorganized!
-- John
L. Lewis
|
*
If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates
labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts
America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.
-- Abraham
Lincoln
*
"Labor
is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital
is only the fruit of labor, and could never have
existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is
the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration."
-- Abraham
Lincoln
|
 |
All
that harms labor is treason to America.
-- Abraham
Lincoln
*
The
strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation
should be one uniting working people of all nations and
tongues and kindreds.
-- Abraham
Lincoln
|
I
have been very interested in labor movement. If
I could have wished another life, I would have loved
to be a pioneer woman in the beginning of labor
movement.
-- Astrid
Lindgren
|
|
When
a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask
him whose.
--Don Marquis
No
festival of martial glory or warrior's renown is this;
no pageant pomp of war-like conquest, no glory of fratricidal
strife attend this day. It is dedicated to peace, civilization
and the triumphs of industry. It is a demonstration of
fraternity and the harbinger of a better age--a more chivalrous
time, when labor shall be best honored and well rewarded.
-- Peter J. McGuire, Father of Labor Day
We
must elevate the craft, protect its interests, advance
wages, reduce the hours of labor, spread correct economic
doctrines and cultivate a spirit of fraternity among the
working people regardless of creed, color, nationality
or politics. These principles are the foundation principles
of our organization.
-- Peter J. McGuire, Father of Labor Day
*
"One
cannot have a trade union or a democratic election
without freedom of speech, freedom of association
and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby
people choose and remove their rulers, there is no
method of securing human rights against the state.
No democracy without human rights, no human rights
without democracy, and no trade union rights without
either. That is our belief; that is our creed."
-- George
Meany |
 |
Every
piece of progressive social legislation passed by Congress
in the 20th century bears a union label.
-- George
Meany
Labor
never quits. We never give up the fight – no matter how
tough the odds, no matter how long it takes.
-- George
Meany
The
basic goal of labor will not change. It is -- as it has
always been, and I am sure always will be -- to better
the standards of life for all who work for wages and to
seek decency and justice and dignity for all Americans.
-- George
Meany
For
it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which
a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a
trade which is valuble and necessary to the common weal,
has no assurance that it will sustain him while he stands
ready to practice it, or keep him out of the poorhouse
when illness or age makes him idle.
-- H.L. Mencken
|
*
"Our
motto is to work for peace based on social justice.
Our mandate is to improve the condition, health
and safety of workers, and our mission is universal."
-- David
A. Morse
|
|
A
Society that gives to one class all the opportunities
for leisure and to another all the burdens of work condemns
both classes to spiritual sterility.
-- Lewis Mumford
|
*
In
less than a century we experienced great movement.
The youth movement! The labor movement! The civil
rights movement! The peace movement! The solidarity
movement! The women's movement! The disability movement!
The disarmament movement! The gay rights movement!
The environmental movement! Movement! Transformation!
Is there any reason to believe we are done?
-- Holly
Near
|
 |
The
essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of
human lives, but of the products of human labor.
-- George Orwell
Strike
not for a few cents more an hour, because the price
of living will be raised faster still, but strike
for all you earn, be content with nothing less.
-- Lucy
Parsons |
|
The
present age handed over the workers, each alone and defenseless,
to the unbridled greed of competitors... so that a very
few and exceedingly rich men have laid a yoke of almost
slavery on the unnumbered masses of non-owning workers.
-- Pope Leo XIII
The
important role of union organizations must be admitted:
their object is the representation of the various categories
of workers, their lawful collaboration in the economic
advance of society, and the development of the sense of
their responsibility for the realization of the common
good.
-- Pope Paul VI
|
|
*
"Out
of our first century of national life we evolved
the ethical principle that it was not right or
just that an honest and industrious man should
live and die in misery. He was entitled to some
degree of sympathy and security. Our conscience
declared against the honest workman's becoming
a pauper, but our eyes told us that he very often
did."
-- Frances
Perkins
"Our
idea of what constitutes social good has advanced
with the procession of the ages, from those desperate
times when just to keep body and soul together
was an achievement, to the great present when
"good" includes an agreeable, stable civilization
accessible to all, the opportunity of each to
develop his particular genius and the privilege
of mutual usefulness."
-- Frances
Perkins
|
|
|
*
“Kids
don’t have a little brother working in the coal
mine, they don’t have a little sister coughing her
lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of
the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke
the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have
child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts
from enlightened management. They were fought for,
they were bled for, they were died for by working
people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that.
That’s why I sing these songs. That’s why I tell
these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit!”
-- Utah
Phillips
|
*
The
labor movement means just this: It is the last noble
protest of the American people against the power of
incorporated wealth.
-- Wendell
Phillips
Organize,
and stand together. Claim something together, and
at once; let the nation hear a united demand from
the laboring voice, and then, when you have got
that, go on after another; but get something.
-- Wendell
Phillips
|
|
The
right to a job without a right to a living wage is just
as weak as the right to a living wage without a job. Both
rights must remain intact and linked together.
-- William P. Quigley
*
It's
incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists
getting together to stop the corporate mentality that
destroys both jobs and the environment.
-- Bonnie
Raitt |
|
|
|
*
The
essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The
labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed,
the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden,
the poor.
-- A.
Philip Randolph
"Nothing
counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure,
and still more pressure through broad organized
aggressive mass action."
--
A.
Philip Randolph
|
|
*
As
long as people and the planet are being exploited,
and billions of dollars are being made precisely
because laborers and the environment are being abused
and used up, there will be children going hungry
and ecological destruction.
~
Ocean
Robbins
|
 |
As
long as people and the planet are being exploited, and
billions of dollars are being made precisely because laborers
and the environment are being abused and used up, there
will be children going hungry and ecological destruction.
As long as war and violence are in our hearts and our
streets as well as in our nations, as long as corporate
greed and unsustainable consumption are at the forefront
of our economies, no child will be born into a truly safe,
peaceful or loving world.
~ Ocean
Robbins
"'If
democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why
should people give up these rights when they enter their
workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom,
for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement,
choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue - control
of our lives, in short. And then we wake up in the morning
and go to work, and all those rights disappear. We no
longer insist on them. And so for most of the day we return
to feudalism. That is what capitalism is - a version of
feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business
leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And
so we still hand over our lives' labor, under duress,
to feed rulers who do no real work.... 'So. We must challenge.
It is time. If self-rule is a fundamental value, if simple
justice is a value, then they are values everywhere, including
in the workplace where we spend so much of our lives'...."
-- Kim Stanley Robinson
*
You
in the unions do not yet represent all of labor. But
I hope some day you will, because I believe that it
is through strength, through the fact that people
who know what people need are working to make this
country a better place for all people, that we will
help the world to accept our leadership and understand
that, under our form of government and through our
way of life, we have something to offer them…
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt |
|
I
have always felt that it was important that everyone who
was a worker join a labor organization.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
I
believe you should tell the story of injustices, of inequalities,
of bad conditions, so that the people as a whole in this
country really face the problems that people who are pushed
to the point of striking know all about, but others know
practically nothing about.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
The
labor movement has a great role to play in our country
today.
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt
|
|
*
No
business which depends for existence on paying less
than living wages to its workers has any right to
continue in this country. By living wages I mean
more than a bare subsistence level --I mean the
wages of decent living.
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt
|
It
is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic
nation that is have free and independent labor unions.
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt
It
is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer
and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of
working conditions, because the best customer of American
industry is the well-paid worker.
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt
|
*
"The
internal and external ethics of an organization
must be the same; you cannot talk about minimum
wages for poor people and not pay minimum wages
to your own workers."
-- Aruna
Roy
|
|
"We
call people who work with mud and earth, and sand and
stone, unskilled labor in India. I cannot in this lifetime
wield the implements that they use either to dig the earth
or to shovel the earth. I can't carry the loads. That's
extremely specialized. But they are called unskilled,
and I am called skilled because I can write with the pen.
I cannot accept this. I find it extremely non-egalitarian
to say they are unskilled and I am skilled. It's only
a way of looking at it. Knowledge is also like that."
-- Aruna
Roy
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
Unions
have been the only powerful and effective voice working
people have ever had in the history of this country.
-- Bruce Springsteen
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
|
 |
