Jaime Harrison Quotes

People are worried about what’s going to happen to their jobs. There’s a lot of off-shoring and out-sourcing taking place. There’s a lot more mobility of labor and of people. Unless we explain what’s happening, people will resort to protectionism and xenophobia.

The most urgent issue facing American workers today is not the glass ceiling. It is the sinking floor.

Workers all too frequently have been taking it on the chin. They're working hard and falling behind, all too frequently.

There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore.

Many of the technologies that are now racing ahead most rapidly, replacing human workers in factories and offices with machines, making stockholders richer and workers poorer, are indeed tending to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth.

As more workers lose manufacturing jobs as companies cut back, some are being forced into lower-paying retail jobs. But they still have union cards in their wallets.

Jobs are disappearing from every sector of the economy, from engineering to health care workers, forcing hundreds of thousands of families into unemployment and low-paying jobs.

Unfair trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement eviscerated good-paying manufacturing jobs, putting more than 3 million U.S. workers out of work.

Every person who is laid off in our society is in effect told that he is a person of little worth.

As we lose manufacturing jobs across the country, the burden falls disproportionately on Black Americans.

There's nothing more unfair than a guy that doesn't have a job.

None of us can promise any of you that what you now do for a living is absolutely safe from now on.

Jobs are being outsourced at such an alarming rate My neighbor has no job at all with no prospects to date. So perhaps I should be thankful for the little that I make If I dare to ask for a living wage My job would be at stake.

Only in a minority of cases will workmen be able to recognize the technological change responsible for their dismissal. For this it would be necessary that machines be introduced in an existent plant under the eyes of the workmen and that dismissal be effected immediately after.

The result [of more rapidly adopting technology] is likely to be more unemployment in the short term and perhaps greater inequality—a recipe for social instability. Economists are right to remind us that workers who are displaced by machine intelligence need not be condemned to long-term idleness. Given the infinite variety of human desires, there is always more work to be done. But society will need to facilitate social structures that help employees face a lifetime of job changes.

Globalization and deindustrialization affected workers of all colors but hit African Americans particularly hard.

Our globalized, automated economy is full of magic - Everyday Low Prices and next-day delivery on that single Gatorade you one-clicked. But it is also full of loss - of jobs, of the dignity of steady work, of chances to rise.

I worked with women who were nurses and workers, women who worked in hotels, janitors who basically cleaned buildings, worked two jobs just to support their family. And, it really taught me a lot about how much opportunity I had to do anything I wanted to with my life.

Look at trade and automation: two competing but slightly overlapping forces in the shrinking of the duration of jobs right now. We have to be able to talk honestly about how disrupted this world is going to be, and it is crazy to mislead people and say we're going to bring back all of the big factory jobs by creating a protectionist regime.

Retraining for the precariat is stressful and demoralising; often, they learn new tricks only to find them obsolescent or unwanted.

American men do have genuine reasons for anxiety. The traditional jobs that many men have filled are disappearing, thanks to automation and outsourcing. The jobs that remain require, in most cases, higher education, which is increasingly difficult for non-affluent families to afford.

Mass layoffs produce big winners and losers. Most workers who remain are financially unscathed, even though their employer is struggling.

I make an excellent salary and work a great job. A lot of the people who voted for Trump don't. Let's say you say you're out of a job and believe this guy is going to get you on back on your feet. You might overlook some stuff not because you believe it. But you're that desperate. They're wrong. But it's what they believe.

What we can say with confidence is that the technological revolution is worsening inequality, due mostly to mechanisms that limit free markets. It is also bringing about disruptive change that is intensifying insecurity and may indeed lead to large-scale labor displacement.

Labor is getting a shrinking slice of a pie that's not growing very much.