Wage Control Quotes

There is nothing to arbitrate. Workers have nothing to do with the amount of wages they shall receive. This is solely the business of the company.

Such a thing as ending unemployment would never occur to Washington politicians because their corporate backers depend on the threat of unemployment to keep wages down.

White men have always controlled their wives' wages. Colored men were not able to do so until they themselves became free. Then they owned both their wives and their wages.

… the struggle of men to outvie one another in production is beneficial to the community; their struggle over the division of the joint produce is not. The stronger side will dictate its own terms; and as a matter of fact, in the early days of competition, the capitalists used all their power to oppress the laborers, and drove down wages to starvation point. This kind of competition has to be checked; there is no historical instance of its having lasted long without being modified either by combination or legislation, or both. In England both remedies are in operation, the former through Trades Unions, the latter through factory legislation.

Many people do not realize that where unions have bargaining rights employers cannot raise wages or improve benefit plans any more than they can reduce them without of the consent of the union.

I'm more concerned about maximum wages, not minimum wages.

While Donald Trump believes in huge tax breaks for billionaires, he believes that states should actually have the right to lower the minimum wage below $7.25. What an outrage!

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

Giving them [workers] their own houses chain them once again to the soil and you break their power of resistance to the wage cutting of the factory owners.

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.

A minimum wage leads to higher levels of unemployment.

Collective bargaining has always been the bedrock of the American labor movement. I hope that you will continue to anchor your movement to this foundation. Free collective bargaining is good for the entire Nation. In my view, it is the only alternative to State regulation of wages and prices - a path which leads far down the grim road of totalitarianism. Those who would destroy or further limit the rights of organized labor - those who would cripple collective bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized - do a disservice to the cause of democracy.

Whoever controls work and wages, controls morals.

I am quite uncomfortable using legislation to peg the minimum wage.

Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are mode.

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.

The owners have the right to pay you whatever they want to. They don't have to pay you if they don't want to.

Our wage freeze was vital to keep wages competitive with rival companies. I always try to communicate to our people that we can never make enough money. We can never make enough profit.

During the thousands of years of monetary system, most workers have been paid just enough to make it necessary that they return to work, even when higher wages have been possible. How else can the wage-payer keep the workers coming back?

I've never believed in lower wages. Never. Never believed in lower wages, I've never believed in lower wages as an economic instrument.

Another relic of Medievalism was the regulation of wages by Justices of the Peace …. The Justices often ordained a rise in wages, and the workmen themselves were strongly in favour of this method of fixing them. The employers on their part also often approved of it.

I think the minimum wage ought to keep pace with inflation.

Hoover had prevented 'an immediate attack upon wages as a basis of maintaining profits,' but the result of wiping out profits and maintaining artificial wage rates was chronic, unprecedented depression.

We want to build the club on our attendances. We don't want to pay all our TV money straight out in transfer fees and wages. We have to invest in developing Villa Park, allowing us to generate our own revenue streams.

Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of the market and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.