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Workers Quotes

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Workers Quotes

“She paints all kinds of things: stones, rocks, cracked walls, old houses, broken bicycles. She loves old things; the history attached with dilapidated structures. The strugglers of life have a soul she says. A building has a soul; the architect who designed it gave a part of his soul. And the workers who gave their sweat and blood to build it gave a part of their soul too. New things make her feel revolted. She asks "Where is their soul?" Of what good is a broken bicycle I ask her. She flashes me a contemptuous look. As she knows that I already know her answer.”

“Europe, the land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts. The land where the economy gets to stagger all over the continent.”

“All the mega corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the workers, environment, and future generations. As with the banking sector, they play games with the lives of millions, hysterically reject any kind of government intervention when the profits are rolling in, but are quick to pass the bill for the cleanup and the far-reaching consequences of these avoidable tragedies to the public when things go wrong. We have a straightforward proposal: if they want public money, we want public control. It's that simple.”

“I wouldn't work in a hospital again! They do not tell you about the high disease risks when they hire you. It is well known that hospital jobs are lemons today with the pandemic. One of my coworkers was suffering with chronic fatigue from her thirties onward. She has never been healthy since working there. She probably had an infection from a sickly patient and never recovered.”

“Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower. The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.”

“If the food that one ate the night before were somehow able to be seen and identified through one’s clothes throughout the day, millions of employees would each fast ten or so days before their payday.”

“You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats...”

“She was shocked when she followed her aunt and cousin down into the city proper. The streets were crawling with people, all hurrying to and fro, mindless of one another. They brushed by with barely even a glance, stepping down into the busy roads between horse drawn buses and draymen’s carts with such confidence, seemingly oblivious that they could be run down at any moment. Children dodged in and out amongst them, ragamuffins all, some barefoot.”

“Democracy—here and in Britain and France, it hasn't been so universal a sniveling slavery as Naziism in Germany, such an imagination-hating, pharisaic materialism as Russia—even if it has produced industrialists like you, Frank, and bankers like you, R. C., and given you altogether too much power and money. On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy's given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.”

“Astronomers know the Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are biologically toxic to their workers health, but do not inform the new hires of it, other than they may get altitude sickness and direct them to use the company supplied drugs to offset that sickness. They know that workers are inappropriately acclimatizing on a daily basis, which further aggravates the altitude sickness symptoms.”

“It is clear that the protective functions of workplace health and safety have transferred to the workers through the process of corporate government deregulation and reduced funding of relevant government departments.”

“When I was instructed to use medical oxygen to do my job at the W. M. Keck Observatory from 2001 to 2006, I was never told about the legal health information that is now posted on oxygen cylinders. My memories of the green medical oxygen cylinders that we would use daily is that they had no information on them and we were never given a recognised legal oxygen administration training course for routine daily use or a medical prescription from a doctor. We were shown the three oxygen cylinders at the facility and told to use them whenever we developed headaches, which was multiple times daily. It was common to find all three oxygen cylinders in use by other very high altitude workers and to have to line up to get a turn on the magical medical gas.”

“Unfortunately, the board of directors that the middle managers report to generally make them aggressive. Imagine being hired into a company and then being told that you have to ignore the emerging health and safety issues (This is illegal!) and not inform the workers that the system is known to be dangerous (This is illegal!). You have two options: To go to jail for illegal activities sometime in the future, or to lose your job now and have all your USA workplace rights removed for recognizing the illegal activities that your Directors want you to engage in. Welcome to the corporate America management team!”

“I have been through the OSHA system twice and I can confirm that I did not have the right to a safe workplace or whistle-blower protection on either occasion.”

“I have noticed over the past three years that most African Christians depend on their pastor or preachers for directions in life than their lecturers, politicians and nurses. That tells why most people refuse certain medical priorities with regards to their pastor's messages. I think if every pastor should have entrepreneurial knowledge coupled with spiritual integrity, Africa will shake!”

“In some cases, you can tell how somebody is being treated by their own boss from the way they are treating someone to whom they are a boss.”

“The boss's got all he needs, certainly, Eats swell, Owns a lotta houses, Goes vacationin', Breaks strikes, Runs politics, bribes police, Pays off congress, And struts all over the earth-- But me, I ain't never had enough to eat. Me, I ain't never been warm in winter. Me, I ain't never known security-- All my life, been livin' hand to mouth, Hand to mouth.”

“The scandal with the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea is how it managed to obtain a construction permit to build a manned telescope in a known biologically toxic environment to workers. How many more people need to die, get injured or develop long term very high altitude sickness that will last a lifetime?”