Barack Obama Quotes

We have to bake labor provisions into the core of an agreement. TPP would do that. Under NAFTA, countries had to simply promise to uphold the laws of their own nations.

As I have said all along, for any trade promotion authority bill to gain my support, it must require strong, enforceable environmental and labor protections.

In Connecticut, we have a vibrant history of advocating to ensure our workers are treated fairly and given the rights and protections they deserve. Still, we need to do more to protect all American workers.

If we have an agreement with a country like Mexico, that doesn't support or protect the rights of workers, that doesn't have the same environmental regulations, how can Canadians ever compete with that jurisdiction?

A man’s right to his job transcends the right of private property.

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

Duty of the Catholic Worker to Join Organized Labor

Do not worry about the side agreements on labor. They are too full of loopholes to pose any threat.

What the labor movement did in this country is to make sure that capitalism worked.

Should any party try and eliminate social security, … and labor laws, you would not hear from that party much again.

Free laborers have not a thousandth part of the rights and liberties of negro slaves. Indeed, they have not a single right or a single liberty, unless it be the right or liberty to die.

Prohibiting something doesn't make it go away. Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it's run illegally by dirt-bags who are criminals. If it's legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be far better.

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.

All we want the Labor Secretary to do is enforce the law and protect workers’ rights.

The decline of the trade union is to some extent inevitable and irreversible.

“Right to Work” is wrong for Kentucky. It’s just another word for union busting...

The right to organize is a fundamental right for American workers.

I do think we need to hold countries accountable who violate trade agreements that are already in place. We need to get stronger about enforcement, that in the future if we strike a trade agreement, toughening up labor standards and environmental standards and enforcement standards is something we absolutely need to do.

For TPP to get my vote, it must benefit America's middle class, raise wages, and safeguard the consumer and environmental protections that we rely upon.

Food service workers, home care workers, farm workers, and other low-wage workers log long hours. They come home tired after providing services and producing goods that make our country stronger. They deserve fair treatment from their employers, and they deserve a voice in collective bargaining.

There is no law for farm labor organizing, save the law of the jungle.

T-Mobile U.S.A. is one company that uses fear and intimidation to scare workers away from union representation.

Collective bargaining, and the fundamental human right, freedom of association, is seen as an anathema to American business, and people just - it doesn't seem to register that there's no universal social safety net that people can touch.

I am a huge believer in organized labor. Period. Full stop.

Where laws recognize rights to collective bargaining, the truth is that employee rights to negotiate with employers are denied in many countries.