Worker Safety Quotes

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

Late 19th-century America was basically a plutocratic enterprise while people toiled in mines and died of coal dust poisoning.

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?

The nation's coal is stained with blood.

Safe working conditions, fair wages, protection from forced labor, and freedom from harassment and discrimination - these must become standard global operating conditions.

I think we have to be fair in saying at this point that neither Roosevelt nor Lewis realized the peril to which they were exposing both the unions and the country.

Peace in the Middle East is of prime importance to the Philippines, due to the presence of around 2 million of our countrymen working in that region.

I worked diligently alongside our labor community to ensure that the priorities of our community were reflected in the USMCA, helping to secure strong enforcement mechanisms, protections for workers and the environment, and provisions to lower the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs.

WWE doesn't do anything to protect the wrestlers; they do things to protect themselves.

State and federal laws protect whistle-blowers, those who refuse to do something illegal, and workers who file claims for workers' compensation.

We believe in the right and duty of persons to work for the glory of God and the good of themselves and others and in the protection of their welfare in so doing; in the rights to property as a trust from God; in collective bargaining and responsible consumption; and in the elimination of economic and social distress.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

Ask the widows and orphans of the thousands of men killed annually through the avarice of railroad corporations refusing to avail themselves of modern appliances in coupling and other improvements on their railroads. Inquire from the thousands of women and children whose husbands or fathers were suffocated or crushed in the mines through the rapacious greed of stockholders clamoring for more dividends.

If we're going to pass international trade agreements, as we should, they should have similar kind of rules, not as high a wage as obviously as a steelworker in the U.S. or in Lorain, Ohio, but certainly rules on the environment and worker safety. You go to Mexico, you don't see those kinds of worker protections or environmental safeguards.

Time after time we're told corporations should have freedom from pesky job safety regulations, environmental protections and labor standards - giving working people the freedom to be crushed in collapsing mines, choke on filthy air and get paid too little to live on.

OSHA was created to regulate jobs that cause injury or illness to workers. Increasingly, though, OSHA sees its purpose as improving the general welfare of working Americans, whether work itself is hazardous or not.

SoHo was called Hell's Hundred Acres because it was full of sweatshops - without fire escapes. Completely not up to code. Every once in a while, these buildings would burn and 26 Puerto Ricans would be killed.

There is a dire need to create awareness regarding proper and safe use of laboratory equipment among lab workers and assistants, since it not only affects the worker but the people attached to them.

If we must grind up human flesh and bones in the industrial machine, then, before God, I assert that those who consume coal, and you and I who benefit from that service, owe protection to those men [the miners] first, and we owe security to their families after, if they die. I say it! I proclaim it! And I care not who in heaven or hell oppose it!

We had violence directed at us by the growers themselves, trying to run us down by cars, pointing rifles at us, spraying the people when they were on the picket line with sulfur.

Protecting children and vulnerable workers abroad is a part of our overall efforts here at the Department of Labor.

Anyone believing the TPP is good for Americans take note: The foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based corporations could just as easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits - say, a regulation protecting American consumers from unsafe products or unhealthy foods, investors from fraudulent securities or predatory lending, workers from unsafe working conditions, taxpayers from another bailout of Wall Street, or the environment from toxic emissions.

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.

I want you to pledge to yourselves in this convention to stand as one solid army against the foes of human labor. Think of the thousands who are killed every year and there is no redress for it. We will fight until the mines are made secure and human life valued more than props. Look things in the face. Don't' fear a governor; don't fear anybody. You pay the governor; he has the right to protect you. You are the biggest part of the population in the state. You create its wealth, so I say, let the fight go on; if nobody else will keep on, I will.

The memory of the 146 people who lost their lives in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire stands as a reminder that legal protections and workplace safety standards were won through a long struggle for social justice and at great human cost.