Labor Regulations Quotes

Minimum wage laws make it illegal for a worker to accept a job that pays less, even if the worker needs that job.

What the working man sells is not directly his Labor, but his Laboring Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Law, but certainly by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed to sell his laboring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer.

I think the time has come when the American people understand that federal employees need to work an 8-hour day just like everybody else.

The gains we made in the United States that have made our country great have, in large part, been made over the opposition of major corporations. On nearly every issue, from fair labor standards, to the minimum wage, to environmental standards, to standards for a safe workplace, corporations have fought against them every step of the way.

I'm the first secretary of labor in the 21st century, and the competitiveness of the American work force and the modernization of decades-old regulations have been among our top priorities.

When I was younger, I looked a lot older than I was. They have these working laws in England where you have to be 16: if you're over 16, you don't have to be restrained by working hours and things like that. In America, it's actually 18.

Our intention is to clarify and modernize overtime pay rules.

We have many rules and regulations that can be sometimes confusing and complicated. By reaching out to the employer community and educating them on what their responsibilities and obligations are to their work force, that, along, with strong enforcement, is the best way to protect workers.

The attack on unions has been far more extreme here [in U.S], and it has been much more successful.

The H-2A guest visa program has been prone to excessive delays and is too rigid to fit the changing needs of farmers and their employees.

We want to shut down the day laborer site. This day laborer site undermines and violates federal immigration law, and it can't go forward.

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

My first protest is against classing grown women with children under the law. Practically all laws limiting hours of work, prohibiting night work, and providing for a minimum wage are enacted for women and minors. I say "practically" just to be on the safe side. As a matter of fact, it is the routine thing to class woman labor with child labor

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

If you don't have collective agreements between unions and employers, governments have to legislate more.

It's not going to be technology. It's not going to be globalization. It's going to be policy decisions and policy settings that will form the future of work.

The employment laws are completely unrealistic. You cannot overcome that in only 10 years. It will take at least another generation before young people are properly qualified.

The concept of equal pay for equal work is not only an impossible task, it can only be accomplished with the total rejection of the idea of the voluntary contract... The idea that a businessman must hire anyone and is prevented from firing anyone for any reason he chooses, and in the name of rights, is a clear indication that the basic concept of a free society has been lost.

All contracts, not in opposition to the laws of the State, that have been entered into in foreign countries, between emigrants who come to settle in this State, or between the inhabitants thereof, and the servants and day laborers or workingmen whom they introduce, are hereby guaranteed to be valid in said State

Newt Gingrich wants to repeal child labor laws. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the man that we need to lead us into the 18th century.

The [Ronald] Reagan administration told the business world that they were not going to enforce the labor laws.

In Maine, nobody is required to belong to a union or pay dues.

I for one believe that we absolutely need an improved guest worker program, one that holds immigrants and employers accountable and yet still enables us to get a crop out of the ground in south Georgia.

Just put a little pin in your mind: when you cross 50 employees, there are a new set of HR rules that you have to comply with.

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.