Iris Dement Quotes

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the US population: 120 million people.

The bottom has fallen out of America's wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us.

There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer

There are very few people at the decision-making table to argue for minimum-wage workers. Very few people.

I am always astonished that conservatives want to save money by paying workers less—driving down the wages of working people.

Where the minimum wage would be if it tracked the changing incomes of the top 1 percent: $22.62

I believe in $15 as a minimum wage.

Why don't these companies making big profits just pay people better than $14 an hour? It's kind of simple. When you're making record profits, why not? I don't get it.

Low pay generally means harder work under worse conditions.

There are people who would like to get rid of minimum wage. But we have to have it, because if we didn't some people would not get paid money. They would work all week for two loaves of bread and some Spam.

There is a responsibility on all companies to look at the quantum of pay and the relationship between the top and the bottom.

The value of the minimum wage shouldn't be eroded, and it has been.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

Once again, the Republicans in the Senate have rejected an increase in the minimum wage. They support tax breaks for multi-millionaires, but they oppose helping the working poor to earn a decent income.

There is no earthly reason why Walmart and McDonald's and Walgreens and these other giant, profitable institutions should have one worker in need of public assistance. It's ridiculous.

Wage theft, worker rights and workplace discrimination should not be swept under the rug. The United States cannot have a functional economy where all the gains go to the corporate class while all the pain goes to regular workers.

It is time this Congress listened to the American people and minimum-wage workers, and it is time that we act.

I must say that I do wrestle with the amount of money I make, but at the end of the day what am I gonna say? I took less money so Rupert Murdoch could have more?

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

We have to raise the minimum wage.

A market where chief executive officers make 262 times that of the average worker and 821 times that of the minimum-wage worker is not a market that is working well. And it is surely not working well enough to build a solid middle class.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

People who work full-time in America should not have to live in poverty - simple as that. Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead. Too many people are finding the rungs on the ladder of opportunity further and further apart.

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