Best Workers' Rights Quotes

"Charter of Workers' Rights has passed; that is a fantastic outcome. Worker's happiness increased by five percent and the diplomatic weight from populations increased."

"Activision Blizzard devs demand breastfeeding protections and other reforms."

"So good for them for sticking up for workers' rights, and I hope Activision Blizzard treats its employees better."

"The billionaire Jeff Bezos sleeps peacefully at night while many of his employees are underpaid and uninsured."

"Anybody can protest against hardship, and if people are facing hardship, workers are on the front line of fire."

"If workers took over a factory... the workers together decided what to do with the profits, you think they'd give a few executives twenty-five million dollars?"

"Everyone deserves to be safe at work and to have workers' rights, regardless of what job you work."

"When I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers' wages, shame on them."

"Every worker deserves to earn a living wage."

"I want workers' rights and for people to have their basic necessities met."

"Unions are the single most powerful tool we have to demand fair, just, and equitable treatment of workers."

"Workers across the country are standing up for their rights as workers."

"New York City's human rights watchdog is now investigating amazon.com over allegations an employee was fired for helping to organize a walkout over work conditions."

"All workers will be compensated for non-working days thanks to correctly conducted emergency evacuation procedures."

"The idea that all workers should have a say in the revenue sharing and power structure is fundamental to a fair workplace."

"Prioritizing safety and workplace conditions and better benefits for the workers that ultimately generate the profits is the appropriate way to go forward."

"The power of the striking workers derives from their union and resolve. If they're able to stand firm, they will win."

"If you go out and work for a living, you should be able to take care of your family, you should have a health service that can look after you, you should be able to retire in dignity, you should be able to get your kids educated, you should be looked after when you're sick. I don't think there's too much to ask for in one of the most advanced economies."

"One of the things that I would try to do is make it much easier for workplaces to unionize and develop workers councils, so that the working class can get at least some percentage of the profits that they generate back."

"We should guarantee paid maternity leave and paid paternity leave, too."

"You look to your co-workers, you hold hands in solidarity, and say, 'Let's try to form a union; let's try to get better wages and better benefits,' and do this in a more direct way."

"Our labor movement is trying to build that by including not just factory workers but service workers too."

"The entire point of the Teamsters is to negotiate better pay and benefits for tons of different workers."

"I applaud our writers and our performers who've been standing up and holding the line because digital, automation, AI, robotics... these technologies are going to have major ramifications for our society, for our economy, for our jobs."

"We defend human rights always, but we go on the counter offensive. We take on corporate interests and we defend workers' rights."

"What's important is that we have the right to work safely and on our own terms."

"In the richest country in the history of the world, we can no longer tolerate millions of our workers being unable to feed their families because they are working for starvation wages."

"I make no apologies for defending the right of every hard-working American to afford a decent life for themselves and their families."

"Even illegal immigrants in America help us. Immigrants are people, workers of the world unite."

"We're gonna make sure that our healthcare workers are properly compensated... for their extraordinary and courageous work."

"Every paycheck must have dignity in it as well." - John Fetterman

"Basic workplace rights: humane treatment, bathroom breaks."

"Drivers forced to pee in bottles to meet quotas."

"There is a kind of rising of working people that we haven't seen in a long time."

"American workers got the eight-hour day much sooner than their much more heavily unionized counterparts in Europe did."

"It's like the whole country is in some kind of Union renegotiation. I don't know who's going to win in the bargaining that's going on right now but right now it seems like workers have the upper hand."

"I am tired of workers' rights not being prioritized in this country, like the right to not be on time."

"Grace Fryer even reportedly said, 'It is not for myself I care, I am thinking more of the hundreds of girls to whom this may serve as an example.'"

"Their fight ultimately won workers the right to sue for damages from corporations."

"Workers Strike Back will be a united, multi-racial, multi-gendered movement of working people."

"A real fast is when you stop oppressing your workers and let the captives go free."

"It's time that we stop falling for it and start standing together in solidarity as workers." - Brianna

"It's a manifestation of decades of degradation of workers' rights."

"That's what the average American worker has to deal with. That's what these scummy politicians should have to deal with."

"Defending the right of workers to organize unions free from legal corporate union busting. Love it. Great title."

"Workers should not have to depend on the goodwill and largesse of billionaires in order to have a decent workplace."

"Unions are about solidarity, about men and women working collectively for basic rights they deserve because of their humanity."

"They don't like workers getting paid more, they want to squash that because that is exactly what will do away with some portion of the demand side of our economic system." - Anna

"So when trade agreements are done, usually trade agreements try to hold other countries to the same standard when it comes to like pollution or when it comes to worker rights, right?"

"The Republican Party is being turned into a Workers Party."

"The democratization of the economic sphere is workers controlling their pursuits in their work, controlling their workplaces."

"The only way for the little guys, that's us workers, to fight back and provide for ourselves is for us to come together and fight collectively for what we need."

"Employees must have the right to choose what's best for their individual faith and for their personal medical situations."

"In 21st century Britain, getting sick while holding down a relatively menial job sees the sick person not just lose their wage for the days off they're sick, but actually pay money to their employer."

"We have to ensure that everyone who works is able to live in dignity."

"Working people are being destroyed, and we as working people need to unite beyond black and white and beyond left and right."

"It's time for us as we're called essential workers to be treated that way, to have a decent quality of life, to have the respect of our employers."

"Being able to speak directly to the everyday lives of those workers is a very real thing and it's a mobilizing message."

"But there's no unseeing the shocking abuse of our corporate overlords to everyday workers."

"The economy today is good, but you've got tens of millions of workers still struggling to put food on the table."

"Protection of a work-free Sunday... We want a European initiative campaign for the work free Sunday."

"Every Floridian has a right to earn a living."

"We don't want workers anywhere to be treated the way workers at Amazon are being treated today."

"We will not defeat this virus unless we have workers advocating for themselves."

"Virginia offers a dire warning for those of us who care about workers' rights and dignity."

"As China's geopolitical rise continues, it might impel the American ruling class to once more put workers' interests towards the front of the political agenda."

"We will protect pensions for all workers that's how we will fight and win justice for immigrants on the job."

"The only way that we can really have a true voice is if we come together and stand together with a union."

"We need a president who doesn't just talk a good game on workers' rights, we need a president who walks the walk."

"Amazon warehouse workers and adjunct professors... share a lot more in common than they did ever before in American history."

"Racial Justice uh, is integral uh, to workers' rights you can't have one without the other."

"If you work 40 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty."

"Every worker in America is entitled to a living wage."

"Our job is to develop an agenda that speaks to the needs of workers."

"I believe in 2022 we're back to supporting workers."

"The reason I'm a democrat is I believe it is the party that is fighting for the workers."

"Let's not forget unions are people right you knows are not this thing right so these people are coming together everyday citizens are questioning again their value right and so they're organizing on their own."

"Power, it always will be about power... but workers are sort of reflecting and reevaluating the power that they do have."

"That's why I am proudly a Democrat... because Democrats are truly the party of workers."

"I think the regular working class folks are those who deserve to be well compensated."

"The Democratic Party needs to embrace unions and workers."

"When workers stand together, they have political power."

"Wages bad, bad morals. Make them pay more. People need to be paid more money. All workers should be paid more money."

"When you have such terrible sick pay provision, you are actively disincentivizing people from staying at home when they're sick."

"We're in this time where we talk about essential workers in this world in the middle of COVID, you know, the essential workers putting our food on our table, those same essential workers deli deserve to have a living wage and be paid fairly."

"A demand: in every workplace, a workers committee is set up to monitor, supervise, and control the health and safety."

"The rise of labor unions, like the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor, crusaded for better wages, shortened workdays, and safer working conditions."

"I guess I am an existential threat to them because I believe that you got to stand up for the working families of this country."

"It's about dignity, dignified wages, a dignified life."

"A union is an association of workers formed to protect their rights and advance their interests - power in numbers, baby!"

"I will always fight for the trucker the essential worker the Canadian who wants to work."

"Closing a unionized store is obvious retaliation, and it's all-out war on the union."

"Threatening workers with job loss and firing them won't stop the momentum of unionization."

"Ask any worker that's ever worked in hospitality or a service industry that's on a low wage: unregulated zero rights from day one."

"People refusing to go into work when you're being told to go in with symptoms, that's very, very brave."

"Profit is what led to us not being prepared... profit is what led people to fire 52 million people... profit is what making workers... suffer lower pay and lost benefits."

"Trump won because he at least pretended to be for working people."

"No one, no matter what they look like, where they're from, or what they do for a living should have to choose between taking time off to heal from being sick or caring for a family member or paying the bills." - Mary Kay Henry

"The next phase of the Qatar trap has to do with how these people were exploited, how their rights were taken away from them to force them to work."

"A lot of workers report being treated like animals, being yelled at and bossed around in totally inhumane ways."

"It's not just defiance that's contagious, it's the reclaiming of dignity and power by workers."

"Sex work is real work and we should be fighting for the rights of sex workers."

"We deserve to have a say in what is going on here, and you can't call us essential and then treat us like we're garbage."

"The workers of the world will never allow genocide to happen on their watch."

"Labour's New Deal for working people: the biggest leveling up of workers' rights in decades."

"What Ordinary People realize is that they are the workers."

"Workers' lives matter less than profit." - Narrator

"I think workers' lives are worth more than scented candles." - Narrator

"Workers are not serfs toiling at the whim of the management lords of the manor."

"This is quite possibly the single largest positive change for workers' rights that has happened since the Reagan Administration. I'm not joking."

"There are way more important things in the game. For me, it's defending human rights and worker's rights, making sure that people can live in dignity." - Jim Cady

"This economy has got to work for the working class, not just the billionaire class."

"Workers of the world, from the blazing light of France to the capitals of the world, we submit this to you now. You have nothing to lose but your chains."

"Now we have the opportunity to put power back in the hands of working people all across this country, and that is a good thing for our economy and for our country."

"It's pencils go down and picket signs go up."

"Bernie Sanders fights for workers' rights at Walmart: 'Pay your workers a living wage!'" - Bernie Sanders

"Hard-working men and women demanded dignity and fair pay."

"I also say the best way is gonna be for workers to take those rights and, I add, just like I think, of course, all of that..."

"Jen Z shouldn't have to work 40 hours and still not be able to make ends meet—that's a non-controversial perspective."

"Know exactly what your break laws are and stand up for your rights."

"We should be outraged on their behalf. They deserve air conditioning, they deserve a water break, they deserve a bathroom break."

"When we harness our collective power, we will win dignity, fairness, and safer working conditions."

"'Another victory for workers at Starbucks.'"

"'Michigan just repealed the state's 58-year-old right-to-work law.'"

"Labor unions were the reason why people felt like they had a say in this process."

"I want to know that like the brands that I'm buying from that they are paying their workers a living wage because the last thing I want is to wear a piece of clothing that has caused somebody a lot of misery."

"I don't have a problem with government aid, even on [expletive] corporations, as long as the government takes ownership over that and distributes it evenly back to the [expletive] workers."

"The great gainers from the Industrial Revolution have actually been the workers."

"I see myself as a voice for the worker."

"Advancing workers' rights abroad strengthens and empowers workers here at home."

"I think clearly labor unions serve the best interests of workers- who happen to be members of labor unions- at the expense of workers who are excluded from being members of labor unions."

"I don't think you can have a democratic society without having trade unions."

"There has been a major revitalization of the Trade union movement in this country."

"Union workers earn 20 percent more on average than non-union workers."

"Starbucks and big corporations have a lot of power and money and they are willing to pull out all the stops to deny workers a voice and a seat at the table in a union."

"If us as workers, we don't have a union, we don't have representation, if we don't talk to each other and realize what the standard is, then that has the potential to just decline."

"The formation of a union and the use of collective bargaining by the workers to get Quark to meet their reasonable demands is shown to be good and even heroic."

"And I’m pro-union because I think unions are the most effective way for workers to protect their rights and fight for fair treatment and their best interests."

"I think it's pretty hard to tell a rational story about how, even as the labor market tightens, workers are supposed to exercise the power in the negotiating process if they don't have union representation."

"If creating a new category of worker allows us to circumvent workers' rights, then by creating a new category of person, we can circumvent human rights."

"The radium girls' lawsuit paved the way for future workers' rights."

"They fought for truth, even on their deathbeds, leaving a lasting impact on workers' rights."

"Their lawsuit exposed the dark underbelly of corporate negligence."

"Workers needing to own and control the means of production."

"Post-capitalism is all about a new kind of democracy, a workers' democracy."

"These conditions drew Lemlich and others to the newly-formed International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union."

"After a four month standoff, Lemlich and the union’s legal counsel Meyer London were able to secure shorter hours and higher pay."

"The labor movement aims to help workers stick together to fight for better treatment in the workplace."

"Under the freedoms that we will obtain, we will be able where necessary to enhance workers' rights in this country."

"Working class people need a pay rise and the answer to the cost of living crisis is through the pay packet."

"Labor unions arose in the United States to facilitate collective bargaining structures that help balance the power business owners can exert over their workers."

"He inherited his father’s radicalism by supporting a minimum wage combined with workers’ participation in factory governance."

"I care way more about the workers' rights for someone making 20K a year versus 50 million."

"So if we don't take this moment and use it to protect the most vulnerable workers among us, then we're letting a moment pass."

"I prefer places where the workers are treated humanely like being allowed to sit and be comfortable for the duration of their shifts."

"Worker cooperative is a business which is run at least to some degree democratically by the workers who work there."

"You want to know why you have social security, why we have Medicare, why we have Medicaid, why we have a 40-hour work week, why we have time and a half for overtime? This didn't come from the employers; they came from the struggles of workers."

"The right of workers is one of our top priorities."

"Nationalism and country borders are not as important as the needs of workers and not as important as the ideology."

"Workers of the World Unite; we have nothing to lose but our chains; workers have no nation."

"The working people of this country frankly deserve better. They deserve to be the top priority just like they have made this country the top priority in their lives and their families."

"If we're talking about human beings getting a living wage, if we're talking about human beings being treated decently, if we're looking at good immigration practices, it shows."

"You will have a good work-life balance, that's for sure, and very good job protection in the form of workers' councils."

"Now with a new living wage, the co-op workers of 1912 became the first group of British shop girls to enjoy the sweet taste of greater independence."

"Workers owning the means of production, that's all it means at its basis."

"Workers should have the right to vote."

"Your employer can't penalize you for not working if your doctor says you cannot work."

"This is absolutely unacceptable; we support workers in this house."

"If the workers at the plant can vote and if a majority support the union, the union is formed."

"We will ensure that workers' rights are fully protected and maintained."

"In capitalism, if it is the case that the bosses mistreat or exploit and dominate the workers, then there's a ready option for workers which is to come together, band together collectively, organize and do something about it."

"They’re treated like people. Their rights are respected. They aren’t ordered to go back on the job and kill themselves and expected to just comply — they’re given a choice."

"Workers join unions for many reasons: higher wages, better benefits, a safer workplace, greater job security, and a voice."

"Employees have rights, and we need to understand as management, the first right is the right to know our hazards and risks related to their health and safety where they are working."

"This Act ensures that older workers are not pressured into waiving their rights."

"We are to provide income security for all workers in Ghana."

"The factory Rana Plaza collapsed because of incredibly bad working conditions and safety conditions."

"It's important for all of us to fight for workers in the gig economy and to see through some of this euphemistic language that they put out there."

"We're on the cusp of a new labor revolution where people can work even fewer hours with more rights and more profit."

"They are very passionate about making sure their workers are receiving a living wage."

"It shouldn't take any fight for workers to get air conditioning and other heat protection in their trucks."

"You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy."

"Fair trade is commerce in which products are made and traded according to standards that protect workers and small businesses in developing countries."

"Stop using prime until the Amazon workers get everything that they deserve."

"I don't want working people in this country to suffer. I want a government that actually represents working people and not multinational corporations."

"An employer cannot fire you for engaging in a protected activity."

"The battle cry of the rioting workers was 'the king, the third, and no more!'"

"It's great to see the power of the workers."

"Unions generally help workers get better working conditions, better pay."

"Let us reaffirm our commitment to ensure that every mine worker is able to return home at the end of each shift to their loved ones."

"No matter how corrupt the union might be, it's still the best possible way for workers to organize."

"If there's any hope, it's in people organizing as workers."

"We've heard today about so many workers having to make really terrible choices between their health and well-being and their family's economic security."

"They don't want us banding together for higher wages or better housing," said Marta.

"Idealistically, dreaming of a more perfect society where workers' rights are held in the highest esteem."

"To be able to champion workers' rights while at the same time being the wife of one of the country's great industrialists."

"I still stand with them. I think that it's ridiculous that these people aren't getting paid what they're due, the money that they work hard for."

"Hazard communication gives you the legal right to know the hazards associated with chemicals in the workplace."

"These women had no expressed legal right to know the hazards of the chemicals they were working with."

"I don't have a degree, the union gets me benefits, and being a single mother, I need flexible hours. I can't lose this job."