Robert Reich Quotes

What we have is a pay structure that, on basic wages, is higher than market rate, as a general statement. When you look at other forms of retail, whether they be food or non-food, we pay more. If you look at our health care benefits, we pay a lot more.

For most Americans, work is central to their experience of the world, and the corporation is one of the fundamental institutions of American life, with an enormous impact, for good and ill, on how we live, think, and feel.

If we care about the average working American, then Wal-Mart matters. A lot.

Today, there are more Americans working than ever before in the history of our Nation, and the average wage of those workers is higher than it has ever been in the history of our Nation.

Jobs mean freedom for workers to support their families.

Most of America doesn't pay dishwashers $10.

Walmart is so huge that a wage boost at Walmart would ripple through the entire economy, putting more money in the pockets of low-wage workers. This would help boost the entire economy - including Walmart's own sales.

If every other store in town is paying workers $9 an hour, one offering $8 will find it hard to hire anyone - perhaps not when unemployment is high, but certainly in normal times. Robust competition is a powerful force helping to ensure that workers are paid what they contribute to their employers' bottom lines.

Raising the minimum wage seems to all economists to, at the very least, fail to 'raise' employment, and we'd all like to see better inclusion of low-skilled workers into good-paying jobs.

In the beginning, I was so chintzy I really didn't pay my employees well.

I would love to see McDonald's pay more money.

The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.

More and more Americans are asking about the price that we have to pay when Wal-Mart comes into a community, treats workers poorly, violates immigration laws and squashes small businesses.

Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy; assure him care when he is sick; assure him maintenance when he is old.

The unemployed have rights that are above charity. They have the right to work.

Jobs in America are the key to a stable environment.

Either Men or Women that have a Trade, or are Labourers, can, if industrious, get near three times the Wages they commonly earn in EngIand.

Full employment means not only jobs--but productive jobs. Americans do not regard jobs that pay substandard wages as productive jobs.

People against the minimum wage say that many workers will lose their jobs. I haven’t ever met a minimum wage worker who didn’t say “Go for it!”

There's this notion out there - and it's a categorically false notion - that the only business model in the service industry is the minimum-wage business model. I say phooey to that. You go to a Costco store, and you see people there who've been working there for years and years. They're making $15, $20 an hour, plus health benefits.

Trump can bring jobs back, but they will be minimal-wage jobs, not the high-paying jobs of the 1950s.

What we have to do is support business, but also support our workers with job training programs and with reasonable wages.

The best thing for workers is work, not unemployment.

Well, for me the canning factory was minimum wage, which at the time I believe was $3.40 or something. I was just happy to have a job.

Instead of focusing on this sort of defeatist mentality where we've gotta up the minimum wage, why don't we focus on creating better-paying jobs?