Labor Quotes

We have the right to choice of our own work and to the reward of our own toil. It inspires the initiative that makes our productivity the wonder of the world.

Nations amass wealth. Labor sweats to create - and turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities.

In vast stretches of the earth, men awoke today in hunger. They will spend the day in unceasing toil. And as the sun goes down they will still know hunger. They will see suffering in the eyes of their children. Many despair that their labor will ever decently shelter their families or protect them against disease. So long as this is so, peace and freedom will be in danger throughout our world. For wherever free men lose hope of progress, liberty will be weakened and the seeds of conflict will be sown.

Before all else, we seek, upon our common labor as a nation, the blessings of Almighty God.

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.

Gone are the days when it was enough to urge the workers of the world to unite. Now, it is the time to say- Shramiks, unite the world!

Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, labor in vain.

Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.

Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.

Every message in a pay envelope, even if it is the truth, is a command to vote according to the will of the employer. But this propaganda is worse-it is deceit.

A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives.

All but the hopelessly reactionary will agree that to conserve our primary resources of man power, government must have some control over maximum hours, minimum wages, the evil of child labor and the exploitation of unorganized labor.

A self-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.

We realize we must continually seek improved practices to insure the continuance of reasonable profits, together with scientific progress, individual initiative, opportunities for the little fellow, fair prices, decent wages and continuing employment.

Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you ...that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.

Without question the Fair Labor Standards Act starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products of farm and factory.

It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions.

The best customer of American industry is the well paid worker.

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.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship.