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Labor Quotes
"The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few."
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"You don't have a very motivated working class, it starts to affect the dynamics of the economy. If workers are disenchanted and disenfranchised, productivity losses will go along with that."
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"I have always been fully persuaded that, through co-operation, labor could become its own employer."
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"Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital."
"So May 4th in the labor movement has always been an important date."
"Just as invasion is the true and tried weapon in the hands of capital against the class struggle, so on the other hand the fearless pursuit of the class struggle has always proven the most effective preventative of foreign invasions."
"It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses."
"We've always been in favor of improved wages for workers. When you have a strong middle class, they want to buy more stuff at Costco."
"Labor can and will become its own employer through co-operative association."
"Less than 8 percent of private sector workers belonged to a union in 2004, and, overall, only 12.5 percent of American workers carry a union card - down from about one-third of workers in labor's heydays in the 1950s."
"Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation."
"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."
"Man cannot live by incompetence alone."
"Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?"
"There would be a paragraph about some veteran digging tunnels for the Germans in a slave labor camp, or something like that. Finally I decided to look it up and go further into it."
"Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938."
"There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right."
"All labour is directed towards producing some effect."
"He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread."
"When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself."
"Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems."
"Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor."
"We always strive to be the best in the wage package."
"There's a lot of labor involved in the birth of a new town."
"I don't know where Bush is going - yet. But, Sharon obviously - I wrote somewhere in the last several months, that Sharon has adopted, essentially, the position of the Labor Party: that the Palestinians are here to stay."
"The Bush administration staunchly opposed legislation which would preserve overtime pay for all workers."
"If capital and labor ever do get together it's good night for the rest of us."
"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."
"Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over."
"A labor strike will tear away a lot of the good things going for this league."
"It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label."
"Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne."
"I would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics."
"The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us."
"Climbing is unadulterated hard labor. The only real pleasure is the satisfaction of going where no man has been before and where few can follow."
"Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable."
"The full potential of labor can be utilized only if there is mobility in labor."
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