Jesse Jackson Quotes

Our nation was built by pioneers - pioneers who accepted untold risks in pursuit of freedom, not by pioneers seeking offshore profits at the expense of American workers here at home.

Free trade would place our farmers and workers in competition with peasant and sweated labor products.

I am all in favor of growing the American economy and engaging in trade with the world, but not at the expense of American workers. The North American Free Trade Agreement is a perfect example of this. Ask the textile workers of North Carolina how NAFTA worked out for them - if you can find any.

For food service industry and retail, I'm for the minimum wage being increased to at least $12. Not for manufacturing. Software and robotics are going to revolutionize manufacturing in the next 10 years. In the meantime, we have to compete with overseas manufacturing.

One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.

In the 20th century, we had a century where at the beginning of the century, most of the world was agricultural and industry was very primitive. At the end of that century, we had men in orbit, we had been to the moon, we had people with cell phones and colour televisions and the Internet and amazing medical technology of all kinds.

We are entering a new phase in human history - one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population.

Right now, I think robots are where it's at. And yes, I'm biased. Robots and space, because with home rocket kits and Lego Mindstorm sets, people can get involved. I was raised on Transformers and GoBots, so I can't imagine what kids who are building real robots are dreaming about.

I fear that CAFTA will accelerate the demise of these domestic textile jobs.

History is full of examples of poorer nations that become wealthy by exploiting their comparative advantage in cheap labor to become globally competitive in a range of manufacturing industries.... If robots are expected to take over many of the menial jobs currently performed by people, the concern should not be for the working class in wealthy countries but for the billions living in the developing world who will now have lost the only established ladder out of poverty.

The global economy shall not run without the consent of the workers….We demand fair trade, not free trade.

If we must grind up human flesh and bone in the industrial machine called industrial America, we owe protection to them and their widows.

Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant.

I will use all my influence in trying to remove from our factory system the cruelties which are practiced in our mills.

Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories…. Negro equality will be abundant, as every white laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave niggers.

In the matter of labor, whether common or skilled, the white artisan has no chance to compete with Orientals upon their own soil, or—except in the manufactures wholly depending upon the applied sciences—upon any other soil. White labor has never been able to compete on equal terms with Oriental labor.

Fundamentally, where you have an industry in which labor is the primary cost, we can’t compete and probably shouldn’t.

The ongoing internationalization of the economy is confronting the labor movement

Most of the jobs that are going from the United States are not going to other countries; they are going to machines.

It [the government] has failed to make the proper adjustments so that the invention of NEW MACHINERY instead of throwing workers out of employment, will only shorten the hours of work for all labor.

Instead of working to give robots personhood status, we should concentrate on protecting our human workers. If that means developing a more cooperative approach to ownership of autonomous trucks so millions of drivers are not left out in the literal cold, so be it.

Robotics has already made significant inroads in electronics assembly, with sewing trades - traditionally many countries' first entry point to the global trading system - likely to come next.

Labor, no matter how inexpensive, will become a less important asset for growth and employment expansion, with labor-intensive, process-oriented manufacturing becoming a less effective way for early-stage developing countries to enter the global economy.

The way we look at manufacturing is this: the U.S.'s strategy should be to skate where the puck is going, not where it is.

When it is fair, American workers can compete and win. I cannot support the TPP in its current form because it doesn't provide that level playing field.