Jeff Van Drew Quotes

I believe in workers' rights when people are doing a good job.

I am always on the side of labor when there is any compromise to be made.

The workers, before all else.

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.

Public employees should have the right to bargain for better wages and working conditions, just like all employees do.

Unions may also legitimately resort to strikes where this is the only available means to the justice owed to workers

When labor is strong, America is strong.

Labor: a man coins himself into his labor,—turns his day, his strength, his thought, his affection into some product which remains as the visible sign of his power; and to protect that, to secure that to him, to secure his past self to his future self, is the object of all government. There is no interest in any country so imperative as that of labor; it covers all, and constitutions and governments exist for that,—to protect and insure it to the laborer.

The truth is that we have got to make America work for working people again.

I'm the first secretary of labor in the 21st century, and the competitiveness of the American work force and the modernization of decades-old regulations have been among our top priorities.

My parents were both union members, and I grew up hearing how important it was to empower workers and have fair labor practices.

Our efforts must be bent in the direction of convincing the great mass of working people of this country of the necessity of our winning and retaining our place in business and commerce. That place can be won only through the workers' own efforts and through their own efficiency.

My father was a member of the Teamsters Union in California, where he helped to organize better health care for workers. My mother worked for more than 20 years on an assembly line.

I even believe in helping an employer function more productively. For then, we will have a claim to higher wages, shorter hours, and greater participation in the benefits of running a smooth industrial machine.

I can't take responsibility for everyone's employment.

Labor also wants shorter hours and a say in how work shall be done.

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

My whole purpose really is to try to help working families to find better jobs and get better benefits and look out for the little guy.

Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.

All people shall have the right and the obligation to work.

I will only stop defending the rights of workers when I die.

I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails under which laborers can strike when they want to...I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to and wish it might prevail everywhere.

I am glad to see a system of labor ... under which laborers can strike when they want to.

Thank God we have a system of labor where there can be a strike.

The shorter working day is the most essential thing in the lives of industrial workers. It means opportunities for life and self-development which are shut out by the whir of the machinery and the routine of the factory job at which the day is spent. It means also more efficiency on the job and better service to the employer.