Working Conditions Quotes

• One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.

  Molly Ivins

  Heart, Giving, Deregulation

  77 Copy quote

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

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Unions, Labor Union, Wells

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1936, Volume 5”, p.504, Best Books on

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• 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

  Real, Presidential, Unions

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1936, Volume 5”, p.504, Best Books on

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• We must ensure that every worker has healthcare and is able to save for their retirement. We must ensure that our workers have safe and health working conditions.

  Leonard Boswell

  Retirement, Safe, Able

  5 Copy quote

• The strike and the boycott, they have cost us much. What they have not paid us in wages, better working conditions, and new contracts, they have paid us in self-respect and human dignity.

  Cesar Chavez

  Self, Cost, Wages

  5 Copy quote

• Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions

  Diane Ravitch

  Teacher, Teaching, Students

  23 Copy quote

• What we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages or working conditions... These so-called "right to work" laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.

  Barack Obama

  Rights, Talking, Law

  Barack Obama's remarks at the Daimler Detroit Diesel Plant in Redford, Michigan, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. December 10, 2012.

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• Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

  Albert Camus

  Solitude, Violence, Monastic Life

  Albert Camus, Jean Grenier (2003). “Correspondence, 1932-1960”, p.195, U of Nebraska Press

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• If the firms that employ an increasing majority of the population are driven solely to satisfy the owner's greed at the expense of working conditions, of the stability of the community, and of the health of the environment, chances are that the quality of our lives will be worse than it is now.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Jobs, Community, Greed

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.9, Penguin

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• No use to preach to the working-man courtesy & politeness when at the same time the working-man is not given working conditions under which he can stay polite and soft-mannered.

  B. Traven

  Men, Use, Courtesy

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• Low income is related to poorer housing, poorer diet, fewer social amenities, worse working conditions. (...) After adjustment for age, sex, race, smoking, alcohol consumption, sleep habits, leisure-time physical activity, chest pain, diabetes, or cancer, there was still an increase risk of 1.6 for those with inadequate incomes.

  Michael Marmot

  Sex, Pain, Cancer

  23 Copy quote

• If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.

  Noam Chomsky

  Honesty, Creating, Corporations

  "Question time" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2003.

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• What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.

  Maxim Gorky

  Mean, Abuse, Black

  36 Copy quote

• Working anti-social shifts in a difficult environment is undoubtedly challenging. But even militant staff may privately concede that some of the working conditions they enjoy are unusually benign.

  Simon Calder

  Challenges, May, Environment

  Source: www.independent.co.uk

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• Fast food also has a uniquely difficult business structure for workers to achieve better wages and working conditions.

  David Rolf

  Wages, Fast Food, Achieve

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Feminism has fought no wars ... killed no opponents ... set up no concentration camps ... starved no enemies ... practiced no cruelty. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets ... for reforms in the law.

  Dale Spender

  Education, War, Women

  59 Copy quote

• I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

  Adrienne Rich

  Thinking, Health Education, Poetry

  Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.11, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Never worry for fear you have broken a man's heart; at the worst it is only sprained and a week's rest will put it in perfect working condition again.

  Helen Rowland

  Heart, Men, Broken

  Helen Rowland (1909). “Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”

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• If you are hired to shake up the system, do it. No one will believe you're the boss until you do one or more of the following: 1. Add a new division; 2. Lop off a present department; 3. Add new people or reassign and reward present employees; 4. Get rid of deadwood; 5. Change the method of accounting; 6. Change lawyers, accountants, or other outside services; 7. Ask a lot of questions, and demand answers by a certain date; 8. Get in touch with key people in your industry or city and arrange personal meetings; 9. Improve working conditions; 10. Update present benefit plans.

  Lois Wyse

  Believe, Cities, Keys

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• Promotion of health generally by improving the standard of living. From the health point of view we are in this connexion first and foremost interested in the three fundamental environmental factors: housing (including family life), nutrition, and working conditions (including human relations as well as material conditions).

  Karl Evang

  Views, Environmental Factors, Firsts

  Karl Evang (1960). “Health service, society, and medicine: present day health services in their relation to medical science and social structures”

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• When we think that the machine will harm man, then it is perhaps because we are not yet capable of judging the rapid changes it has brought about. We hardly feel at home in this landscape of mines and power stations. We have just moved into this new home that we have not even finished yet. Everything around us has changed so fast - personal relations, working conditions, habits. Even our state of mind is in turmoil.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Home, Men, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• The sun would come up over the ocean, and we'd be eating scrambled eggs before we shot some stuff. It was a vacation in the sense that it was the best working conditions.

  Marguerite Moreau

  Ocean, Vacation, Ice Cream

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• Through job creation, quality public services and better working conditions, people, communities and countries can lift themselves out of poverty, improve livelihoods, engage in local development and live together in peace. This happens only when work is decent - environmentally sound and productive - provides fair wages, and is underpinned by rights

  Sharan Burrow

  Country, Jobs, Rights

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  Heart, Giving, Salary

  "Labor’s Fight Is OUR Fight" by Dave Johnson, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 29, 2012.

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• Awards are important for all directors because they improve your working conditions. You're only as good as your last film, so if you get prizes or large audiences, then you get more money for your next film.

  Michael Haneke

  Awards, Important, Directors

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