Fiorello H. La Guardia Quotes

It is time this Congress listened to the American people and minimum-wage workers, and it is time that we act.

Ten cents a day is adequate pay for a workingman.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

We must organize. We must protest. We must cry out in a loud voice that America needs a raise. We must keep working until workers in this country don't have to struggle to make ends meet.

When thousands of men and women work full time but need food stamps to put food on their tables, when they can't get health benefits, when they can't get paid sick days, then we must do whatever we can to stand up for them.

The bottom line is that five million low-income Americans working full time for minimum wage, deserve a raise.

The social order we have built recognizes no exploitation of man by man. In our country there are no rich people to live at the expense of the workers and peasants. Just as there are no poor people living on the charity of others.

People believe that if they work, they should be paid a living wage…. Work has to pay.

It is unjust to let any starve, when we think it just to limit the wages of the poor, so as they can lay up nothing against the time of their impotency and want of work.

General well-being is incompatible with lowness of wages.

living wage

“A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,” is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing; yet in what corner of this planet was that ever realized?

We must ensure American workers get the long-overdue raise they deserve.

We need to see the FLSA and the minimum wage as part of a larger struggle to cut poverty and to address the challenge of income inequality.

American workers deserve a raise. I fully support the push for $15 an hour and a union. We also must raise wages for low and middle income families.

I believe in $15 as a minimum wage.

To improve the standard of living for working folks, we have to raise the minimum wage and empower workers to fight for their interests in an economic and political system that's stacked against them.

As more and more people demand fair pay, the Government and big corporations are going to have to take notice.

The 'Living-Wage Campaign' at Harvard is like a Boston winter: you know it's going to strike, but wonder only when and how hard.

There are people who would like to get rid of minimum wage. But we have to have it, because if we didn't some people would not get paid money. They would work all week for two loaves of bread and some Spam.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works a full time job should have to live in poverty. That's a fundamental value proposition, an article of faith in our country that I know an overwhelming majority of Americans agree on.

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

Raising the minimum wage is the right thing to do, but it's a popular thing to do as well.