Best labor & workers Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

Source: What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt

“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. . . .”

Ifs World Want Hands Winning Powerful Arms Labor Property Workers Pockets Capitalist Solidarity Folds

Author:Joseph James Ettor

“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.”

“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.”

Ifs Hands Class Labor Workers Organized Pockets Capitalist Organized Labor

Author:Bill Haywood

“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.”

People Poor Pay Ethics Labor Organization Workers Internals Minimum Wages Poor People Minimum Wage

Author:Aruna Roy

“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.”

World Dream Earth Together Asks Community Powerful Labor Unions Workers Around The World New World Ashes Powerless

Author:Andy Stern

“Workers do not strike every day, they cannot do that the way they function in the capitalist economy. The way they have to live by selling their labor power makes that impossible.”

Way Economy Impossible Labor Function Workers Strikes Selling Live By Capitalist Capitalist Economy

Book:Revolutionary Marxism and social reality in the 20th century: collected essays

Source: Revolutionary Marxism and social reality in the 20th century: collected essays

“If you can see, hear, feel, and think, you should know that King Dollar rules the United States, and that the workers are robbed and exploited in this country to the heart's content of the masters.If you are not deaf, dumb, and blind, then you know that the American bourgeois democracy and capitalistic civilization are the worst enemies of labor and progress, and that instead of protecting them, you should help to fight to destroy them.”

“As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested...in unskilled labor. ...The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on.”

“The trade agreement itself does have labor and environmental protections, but we have to stand for human rights and we have to make sure that violence isn't being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights.”

Trying Humans Doe Rights Violence Labor Trade Environmental Workers Human Rights Protection Agreement Organize Environmental Protection Trade Agreements

Author:Barack Obama

“The most important thing in industry is the person who does the industry, which is the worker... Labor is the only source of wealth.”

Persons Doe Important Wealth Source Industry Labor Important Things Workers

Book:Goodbye Profit System: 8 Aesthetic Realism Lectures May 22 to July 10, 1970, Reported by Students of Aesthetic Realism

Source: Goodbye Profit System: 8 Aesthetic Realism Lectures May 22 to July 10, 1970, Reported by Students of Aesthetic Realism

“Labor produces marvels for the rich but it produces deprivation for the worker. It produces palaces, but hovels for the worker. It produces beauty, but deformity for the worker. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back to barbaric labor, and it turns the remainder into machines.”

Turns Work Rich Produce Labor Machines Workers Sections Palaces Deprivation Barbaric Deformity

Author:Karl Marx

“When every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied.... His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.”

Ifs Men Hands Used Hours Taken Cutting Objects He Man Amount Becoming Labor Machines Slavery Workers Satisfied Factories Twelve Tire Condemning Factory Workers

Author:Max Stirner

“When the press writes scare stories about the global labor supply draining jobs from rich to poor places, the story is usually presented as a "race to the bottom" simply in terms of wages. Capitalism supposedly looks for labor wherever labor is cheapest. This story is half wrong. A kind of cultural selection is also at work, so that jobs leave high-wage countries like the United States and Germany, but migrate to low-wage economies with skilled, sometimes overqualified workers.”

Source: The Culture of the New Capitalism

“Converting a classic batch-and-queue production system to continuous flow with effective pull by the customer will double labor productivity all the way through the system (for direct, managerial, and technical workers, from raw materials to delivered product) while cutting production throughput times by 90 percent and reducing inventories in the system by 90 percent as well.”

Way Wells Cutting Materials Products Percent Flow Labor Direct Workers Productions Customers Productivity Classic Reducing Raw Materials Converting Inventory Queues

Author:James P. Womack

“Emancipation of human labor from economic servitude and exploitation, i.e., from organizations of production in which the conditions of work are determined by a master class who own the means of production, and in which the fruits of work are alienated from workers to the benefit of masters.”

Humans Mean Wisdom Politics Class Economy Economic Conditions Masters Benefits Labor Organization Fruit Workers Productions Determined Liberalism Exploitation Emancipation Servitude

Author:Mortimer Adler

“On the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part owner of the great workbench at which he is working with everyone else. A way toward that goal could be found by associating labor with the ownership of capital joint ownership of the means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits of businesses, so-called shareholding by labor, etc.”

Way Mean Persons Found Politics Goal Economy Labor Bases Management Workers Profit Liberalism Etc Owners Ownership Entitled Great Work Joints

Author:Pope John Paul II

“Thus, the capital owner is not a parasite or a rentier but a worker - a capital worker. A distinction between labor work and capital work suggests the lines along which we could develop economic institutions capable of dealing with increasingly capital-intensive production, as our present institutions cannot.”

Wisdom Politics Lines Economy Economic Capable Labor Institutions Workers Productions Liberalism Distinction Owners Parasites

Book:Democracy and Economic Power: Extending the ESOP Revolution through Binary Economics

Source: Democracy and Economic Power: Extending the ESOP Revolution through Binary Economics

“Labor is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God!”

Heart Given Force Labor Essence Sacred Workers Almighty Celestial Almighty God

Book:Past and Present

Source: Past and Present

“All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another.”

People Made Lasts Process Progress Century Produce Couple Areas Economics Labor Workers Permanent Productive Goods Temporary Fewer Unemployment Shifting

Author:Milton Friedman

“I had never before seen my friends come in beaten, their heads laid open, their noses broken, or seen them jailed for peaceably demonstrating that they wanted work. I had only known how workers lived. Now I was face to face with what our society did to workers who could get no work.”

Wanted Faces Known Broken My Friends Labor Workers Noses Our Society Beaten Unemployment Face To Face Demonstrating Labor Movement

Author:Mary Heaton Vorse

“You are never going to have, in a country as rich as ours [the USA], that borders a country as poor as Mexico, an end to immigration. You just won't. The question is, if you make it humane and if you make it regulated. It's much better for an American worker to compete against a regulated immigrant inside labor standards, than it is to ever to compete against an illegal immigrant.”

Ifs Ends Country Poor Rich Standards Labor Workers Immigration Borders Usa Immigrants Illegal Mexico Humane Illegal Immigrants American Workers

Author:Ezra Klein

“If we don't have workers organized into labor unions, we're in great peril of losing our democracy.”

Ifs Democracy Losing Labor Unions Workers Organized Peril Labor Union Labor Movement

Author:Dolores Huerta

“Through its prohibition on birth control, the Church has suggested that the only right way to have children is through biological reproduction: a kind of forced labor culminating in the production of another soul for God. What kind of a God stands like Lee Iacocca at the end of an assembly line, driving his workers with a greedy 'More! More!' while the automobiles pile up in showrooms and on freeways and in used-car lots and finally junkyards, his only satisfaction the gross production figures at the end of every quarter?”

“Workers, black and white, need some kind of international affirmative action to protect them from unfair competition with unorganized or slave labor abroad and unfair competition with robots at home.”

Needs Kind Home Action Black White Protect Labor Competition Slave Workers International Black And White Unfair Robots American Politics Affirmative Action Affirmative Slave Labor

Author:Jesse Jackson

“Johnny Cash was a rebel, not only just in the musical sense, but he was somebody who was for the people, and an advocate for labor, for workers, for prisoners, people who have been trapped by the criminal justice system.”

People Has Beens Justice Labor Workers Musical Criminals Prisoner Rebel Cash Trapped Justice System Criminal Justice Criminal Justice System

Author:Michael Franti

“The welfare, the happiness, the energy and spirit of the men and women who do the daily workis the underlying necessity of all prosperity.... There can be nothing wholesome unless their life is wholesome; there can be no contentment unless they are contented.”

Men Life Is Spirit Energy He Man Men And Women Labor Workers Prosperity Welfare Contentment Daily Work

Book:Works: ¬The new freedom of call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a people

Source: Works: ¬The new freedom of call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a people

“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker's body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers' intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”

Source: In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power

“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamicsthat present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”

“I have a feeling-as compelling as a religious conviction-that if industry will constantly pass on to the worker and the customer all the savings of labor-saving machinery and invention, rather than siphon them off into the pools of watered securities, it will by that process keep distribution and production in balance and go as far toward Utopia as our poor human natures will go or be driven.”

“Sulky labor, and the labor of sorrow are little worth: if you could only shed tranquility over the conscience and infuse joy into the soul, you would do more to make the man a thorough worker than if you could lend him the force of Hercules, or the hundred arms of Briareus.”

Ifs Men Littles Soul Joy Force He Man Arms Sorrow Hundred Conscience Labor Workers Shed Tranquility Thorough Sulky

Author:William Wilberforce

“A serf-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.”

Children Self Reason Hours Existence Democracy Economic Labor Workers Justification Wages Stretching Child Labor Serfs

Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; whatfrom the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer.”

Ifs Men May Doe Play Jobs Individual Differences Work Views Pay Example Depends Taste Labor Workers Point Of View Gardener Manuals Clerks Laborers Cobblers

Author:W. H. Auden

“Because of their historical theory of the "alienation of labor" (that the worker must become less and less in control of the work of his hands) the Marxist parties never fought for the man-worthy job itself.”

Men Hands Jobs Party Theory Labor Historical Workers Worthy Alienation Marxist

Book:Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

Source: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

“These are the now-endangered markers of a civilized society: legally ordained minimum wages, child labor laws, workers safety and compensation laws, pure foods and safe drugs, Social Security, Medicare and rules that promote competitive markets over monopolies and cartels.”

“In the Catholic Worker we must try to have the voluntary poverty of St. Francis, the charity of St. Vincent de Paul, the intellectual approach of St. Dominic, the easy conversations about things that matter of St. Philip Neri, the manual labor of St. Benedict.”

Trying Matter Easy Poverty Conversation Approach Intellectual Labor Catholic Charity Workers Manuals Things That Matter Philip Manual Labor St Benedict

Author:Peter Maurin

“Most of Marx's predictions have failed to materialize, and his labor theory of value and other ideas have been proven wrong. Marx failed to recognize the incentive system built into the capitalist model - consumer choice and the profit motive of the entrepreneur. The irony is that capitalism, not socialism or Marxism, that has liberated the worker from the chains of poverty, monopoly, war, and oppression, and has better achieved Marx's vision of a millennium of hope, peace, abundance, leisure, and aesthetic expression for the 'full' human being.”

“And what would help minority workers are the same things that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, the education and training that lead to such jobs, labor laws and tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth.”

Helping Jobs Law Opportunity Nations Wealth White Balance Taxes Training Labor Workers Minorities Distribution Living Wage Labor Laws

Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

“The New Deal never rethought the draconian racist immigration restriction policies of the 20s, of course, but its electoral base rested significantly on "ethnic" voters, whose activism was both hemmed in and rewarded by the Democrats. Southern and Eastern Europeans were included as secondary leaders of the new industrial unions, and as entitled citizens qualified for social security, unemployment compensation, and fair labor standards protections, even as workers of color were largely left out of key areas of the welfare state.”

“The pioneer labor historian John Commons was not wrong when he wrote around World War One that exploiting and deepening such tensions as outpacing scientific management among U.S. innovations where bossing was concerned. Amidst the general miseries of proletarianization, workers also learned that one source of meager benefits and protections could lie in claiming a white skin.”

World War Lying White Source Benefits Concerned Labor Skins Innovation Management Misery Workers Protection War Of The Worlds Tension Historian Pioneers World War One White Skin

Author:David Roediger

“Black Friday, in reality, is a symptom of the plight that 30 years of Reaganomics has brought to working people in America. Right along with the frenzied rise of shoppers willing to fight each other at retail outlets across America, we've been steadily, for the last 30 years, watching the destruction of organized labor ... of decent pay and wages and conditions for working people. ... We have Black Friday today because the wealthy elite have strangled their workers for 32 years, ever since Ronald Reagan's election.”

“The documentary we are working on is about my mother, Bev Umehara, for whom our film company, Bev's Girl Films, is named after. It is a passion project that I have wanted to make since her unexpected passing in 1999. The film is about my mother's calling which came late in life, at 47, when she made the sudden transformation from a humble hardworking secretary and mother of four, into a labor activist, a respected union leader, and a role model for rank-and-file workers, women of color, and for all Asian Pacific Americans.”

“If the economy is growing, people want to employ more workers. If you hire more labor, wages go up.”

People Ifs Want Economy Growing Labor Workers Wages

Author:Michael Hudson

“Our society is connecting workers with the products people consume and recognizing workers for their contributions. It is important to do that, and to have organized labor - a middle class - to preserve our democracy.”

People Important Class Democracy Middle Products Labor Workers Preserves Organized Contribution Middle Class Our Society Recognizing Connecting Organized Labor

Author:Dolores Huerta

“Donald Trump used undocumented labor to build the Trump Tower. He underpaid undocumented workers, and when they complained, he basically said what a lot of employers do: "You complain, I'll get you deported."”

Said Used Trump Labor Workers Complaining Towers Employers Underpaid Undocumented Workers

Author:Hillary Clinton

“When the New Deal programs were passed in the mid 1930s, millions of workers were joining unions, striking, and occupying factories to fight for a better life. It was this radical labor movement that forced the establishment to make concessions.”

Fighting Deals Millions Movement Program Labor Unions Workers Radical Establishment Factories Better Life Joining 1930s Concessions New Deal Labor Movement

Author:Kshama Sawant

“More generally, independent farmers had to be trained to become docile workers in the expanding industrial system. It was necessary to drive from their heads evil ideas, such as the belief that wage labor was not much different from chattel slavery. That continues to the present, now sometimes taking the form of an attack on public education.”

Ideas Different Sometimes Form Evil Belief Labor Independent Slavery Workers Farmers Expanding Public Education Docile

Author:Noam Chomsky

“I think that when it comes to issues of trade, I think it is important for us to be in favor of trade, but I also think it is important to make sure that we are putting in place the labor standards, the environmental standards, that are going to provide some of a fighting chance for American workers.”

Thinking Important Fighting Chance Issues Standards Labor Trade Environmental Workers Favors American Workers

Author:Barack Obama

“Labor unions have a long history of benefitting all workers, even those who are not members of unions, because everyone's wages go up. If we don't increase membership - and membership in labor unions is going down because of the attacks against organized labor - it's something every single American, whether they're officially in a union or not, should be concerned about. It's a spiral. It's a weakening of the middle class and our economy can't sustain that.”

Ifs Should Long Class Economy Middle Members Concerned Labor Increase Unions Workers Organized Middle Class Wages Spirals Membership Weakening Labor Union Organized Labor

Author:Nina Turner

“President [Barack] Obama - he was unsuccessful in his efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, but he still used the Labor Department in other ways to try to boost paychecks for American workers.”

Way Trying Stills Used President Effort Labor Raises Workers Barack Department Minimum President Barack Obama Minimum Wage Boost Paychecks Unsuccessful American Workers

Author:Rachel Martin

Labor Quotes

Related topics

Labor Quotes