Tom Perez Quotes

The rise of franchising, contracting, and other similar employment practices has made it harder to enforce worker protections like minimum wages, overtime pay, and the right to unionize.

We should abolish 'work.' By that I mean abolishing the distinction between work and leisure, one of the greatest mistakes of the last century, one that enables employers to keep workers in lousy jobs by granting them some leisure time.

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.

The Bush administration staunchly opposed legislation which would preserve overtime pay for all workers.

The Republican Party is bringing out here onto the floor of Congress an all-out assault on the protection of the rights of people who work in the fields of our country, in the factories of our country, in the offices of our country.

There is no use in repeating that threadbare capitalist boast that we have more things than ever before and that workers are better off than were ancient kings. The point is that no age has ever so tragically failed to use the machinery it had for ease and security of living. Things may have increased but so has insecurity. The peasant and artisan of old was assured work and an honorable place in his family and community while he lived. He knew nothing of the dead line at forty or forty-five which gives new terror to old age. He knew almost nothing of unemployment as a social disease which in so-called normal times affects some ten per cent of the workers and is today the lot of twenty-five to thirty-three per cent of them.

When you work extra, you should be paid extra. That's what the Fair Labor Standards Act said. And I've met so many people who are working 60-70 hours a week, and they are effectively working 20 hours for free because they are making a little bit above the minimum wage, because the 2004 regulation enables employers to do that. That's not fair.

The secret's out: New York's Labor Law provides the power to help low-wage workers earn enough to meet their basic needs.

I envisage there being absolutely no regulation whatsoever - no minimum wage, no maternity or paternity rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no pension rights - for the smallest companies that are trying to get off the ground, in order to give them a chance.

Workers' rights must be respected.

The workers who get hurt by corner-cutting often do not realize they are being wronged. Even when they do, they do not have the support and resources to fight back. Without a union to stand behind them, these workers are forced to stay in bad jobs, or face no job at all.

Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.

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.

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

I believe that the Right to Work issue is a perfectly appropriate one for Indiana to look at.

Those of us in the Congress must confront and overcome Republican intransigence to increasing the minimum wage, extending unemployment insurance and protecting food stamps.

We must ensure that every worker has healthcare and is able to save for their retirement. We must ensure that our workers have safe and health working conditions.

Were the workers who sweated to put food on my table paid at least minimum wage? Did they get health benefits? Overtime? Were they unionized? Protected from pesticide exposure?

We have tried voluntary codes and we have tried free markets, but they have not worked, so we need to try something else. Legislation is not a panacea for all the inequalities in the workplace, but it will go a long way towards stopping them. Effective employment legislation is needed

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.

Ascertain from employers whether the laborer is not regarded the same as a machine, thrown out as soon as all the work possible has been squeezed out of him.

During those twelve hour nights we’d chat about the motormen, conductors, guards etc. whose conditions were even worse. They had to work a ‘spread’ of 16 hours each day in order to get 10 hours pay. Negro workers could get jobs only as porters. They were subjected to treatment that makes Little Rock and Birmingham seem liberal and respectable by comparison … I also saw Catholic ticket agents fired by Catholic bosses for going to mass early in the morning while the porter ‘covered’ the booth for half an hour. Protestant bosses fired Protestant workers for similar crimes — going to church. The Jewish workers had no trouble with the subway bosses — Jews were denied employment in the transit lines.

You should pay the laborer his wages before his sweat dries

Limitation of the working day to eight hours for all hired workers. ... A complete ban on overtime work. The prohibition of the employment of children of school age.... A ban on the use of female labour in occupations which are harmful to the health of women The provision of nurseries for infants and young children in all ...enterprises employing women. State insurance for workers against old age and partial or complete disability The establishment of properly organized health inspection in all enterprises...free medical services for workers at the employer's expense, with wages to be paid during time of illness

The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions.