Tom Perez Quotes

Raising the overtime threshold - something that is about to happen. This is more complex so not as many people understand it, but it's equally consequential.

The Bush administration staunchly opposed legislation which would preserve overtime pay for all workers.

Businesses should no longer be allowed to depress wages by hiring illegal labor and then falsely claim that Americans don't want to do the jobs.

I think actually what I'm going to do when I'm done and take my next vacation, is I'm going to go over and start unions in Japan. I'm going to unionize Japan. Because the way they work those crews is so criminal. There's no overtime, so they can just keep going.

We have tried voluntary codes and we have tried free markets, but they have not worked, so we need to try something else. Legislation is not a panacea for all the inequalities in the workplace, but it will go a long way towards stopping them. Effective employment legislation is needed

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.

The secret's out: New York's Labor Law provides the power to help low-wage workers earn enough to meet their basic needs.

America has two clear tiers of workers: contractors and employees. The former have few regulatory protections; the latter have many.

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

I have said, on a number of occasions, that we could have a lower minimum wage or no minimum wage.

The NLRB provides important protections to American workers.

By mandating equal pay, the government erases the competitive advantage of those people who are willing to take less pay. In addition, employers are less willing to hire employees who they believe could subject them to increased liability.

The New Deal Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act which granted unrestricted sovereign power to the barons of union labor.

The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways: 1st — When they are neglected in infancy. 2nd — When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them. 3rd — When they are paid low wages for their labor

The people of this country, by an overwhelming vote, are in favor of having Congress-- this Congress-- put a floor below which industrial wages shall not fall, and a ceiling beyond which the hours of industrial labor shall not rise.

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.

Workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe, or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear, and to be housed withal — to say nothing of their share of the other social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as education and artistic gratification.

For the last 40 years workers have not obtained any share of the productivity gains they have produced.

“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?

Every socialist recognizes the dependence of the workingman on the capitalist.

Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country, was 'socialist.' The concept of the 'minimum wage' was seen as a radical intrusion into the marketplace and was described as 'socialist.'

We will open a new bunch of reforms regarding the labor market to make it simpler and adaptable, more flexible.

People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship, and if that happened, then they wouldn't be prey to the employers who say, 'We want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.'

It makes no sense that this country has 11 million workers feeding, building this country, making America what it is, and they don't share the same rights of those who are consuming the fruit of their labor.

The rise of franchising, contracting, and other similar employment practices has made it harder to enforce worker protections like minimum wages, overtime pay, and the right to unionize.