Tom Perez Quotes

Some contractors force workers to provide paybacks to keep their jobs. Others intentionally misclassify workers in order to underpay them - by, for example, paying a skilled construction worker as a general laborer.

Meanwhile, hard-working Americans are increasingly faced with workplace conditions in which critically important safeguards are watered down, emerging problems are ignored, and enforcement is scaled back.

The people who come to work deserve to be paid properly, and there's no excuse. I could understand someone making a small error, but sometimes people make systematic errors, and that's not right.

An American worker should not expect his pay to be cut because somebody comes to this country illegally and is willing to work for less than he or she should be paid.

New Yorkers would be shocked to learn of the conditions some construction workers in our city toil under.

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.

Wage theft, worker rights and workplace discrimination should not be swept under the rug. The United States cannot have a functional economy where all the gains go to the corporate class while all the pain goes to regular workers.

You should pay the laborer his wages before his sweat dries

When you work extra, you should be paid extra. That's what the Fair Labor Standards Act said. And I've met so many people who are working 60-70 hours a week, and they are effectively working 20 hours for free because they are making a little bit above the minimum wage, because the 2004 regulation enables employers to do that. That's not fair.

One of the most pervasive and damaging trends we are seeing in the 21st-century workplace is the deliberate misclassification of workers by employers looking to shift responsibility and cut costs.

Misclassification means workers are denied not just minimum wage and overtime but other social safety net protections like workers' compensation and unemployment insurance.

Owners never paid my salary. I always recognized that it was the people in the seats who did. I always wanted to give my best.

Foreign workers typically migrate to Malaysia willingly, looking for greater opportunities, but often fall into forced labor or debt bondage.

It is Trump who plays with the tax code to pay no taxes; it is Trump whose Trump-brand products are made overseas by cheap labor; it is Trump who hires undocumented workers from Poland to work on his projects, then refuses to pay them minimum wages.

The workers who get hurt by corner-cutting often do not realize they are being wronged. Even when they do, they do not have the support and resources to fight back. Without a union to stand behind them, these workers are forced to stay in bad jobs, or face no job at all.

When illegal labor is used, that almost always depresses wages paid to all workers. The illegal workers can be exploited, and they will usually accept lower wages. As a result, all workers in the plant, including U.S. citizens, will see their wages go down.

Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant.

I will use all my influence in trying to remove from our factory system the cruelties which are practiced in our mills.

If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated ...

Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters [employers] and their workmen, its counselors [members of the legislature] are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when in favor of the masters.

The miserable living conditions, the long [work] hours, the universal insecurity, tended to tear down the personality, cheapen the man.

A man cannot demand a salary for saying what his employers do not want said.

[Developing country] sweatshops, where the conditions are admittedly appalling by Western standards, represent an improvement -- often a significant improvement -- over the alternatives available to their workers. To boycott them or impose other significant additional costs on them makes life worse for many poor people by depriving them of relatively good jobs. This is especially true for women in the developing world, for whom rural life is often far worse than industrial labor in cities.

The fast food industry is rife with sexual harassment. These kids need the job and the supervisors--almost all male--take advantage of them.

I oppose increased black-lung benefits for miners, because ‘they chose to be miners.