Quotes About Labor

Workers aren't free to move, labor can't move, but capital can.

Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, which was efficient but also a highly controlling device. There was a problem with the assembly line. It's so onerous that people dropped out. They couldn't stand it. They had to hire almost a thousand workers to see if they could get one hundred to stay on.

The workers who built the settlements and produced the export crops may now enjoy their freedom in the world's largest prison.58

A major reason for the concentrated, almost fanatic attack on unions and organized labor is they are a democratizing force. They provide a barrier that defends workers' rights, but also popular rights generally. That interferes with the prerogatives and power of those who own and manage the society.

In fact, what are called international "free trade agreements" are not free trade at all. The trade system was reconstructed with a very explicit design of putting working people in competition with one another all over the world.

The United States is a business-run society, much more so than comparable ones. Correspondingly, it has a very brutal labor history . . .

Cuando vendes un producto, conservas el control sobre tu persona. En cambio, cuando vendes tu trabajo, te estás vendiendo a ti mismo.

En una sociedad democrática y libre, los trabajadores deberían ser «los dueños de su propio destino industrial», y no herramientas alquiladas por los empresarios.

Es «antiliberal y amoral» el formar a los niños para que trabajen «sin apelar a la libertad ni a la inteligencia, sino en nombre del salario».

A sit-down strike is just one step short of saying, "Look, instead of sitting down, we'll run this place. We don't need owners and managers." That's huge. That could be done in Detroit and in other places that are being closed down.

Un estudio concluye que «Estados Unidos tenía más muertes al final del siglo XIX debido a la violencia laboral, en términos absolutos y como proporción de la población total, que cualquier otro país salvo la Rusia zarista».3 El término «violencia laboral» es una forma educada de referirse a la violencia del Estado y de la seguridad privada contra los obreros. Eso continuó hasta finales de la década de 1930;

It's necessary for the capitalists to find on the market the commodity that produces more value than it itself costs. That's the trick. This unique commodity is labor power, and is the only element in the process that produces surplus value, which is the source of profit. It's a unique commodity in that regard. How does this work? Fortunately, there is a simple answer. I hate to be bearer of bad news, but this is how it works: exploitation of the worker.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.

These problems were particularly knotty in situations where the Nazis had "legalized" their acts of persecution by announcing laws and decrees that ordered deportations, compulsory labor, or seizure of property.

Scratch any fortune and you'll find blood only a generation or two back...child labor in mines or mills...Slavery. Drugs. Stock swindles. Wasting nature with clear-cuts, pollution, harvesting to extinction. Monopolies. Disease. War. Every fortune comes out of something unpleasant.

You study any pretty democracy, from the ancient Greeks forward, and you'll see that the only way each system functions is with a working class of slaves. Peons to haul the garbage so the upper crust can campaign and vote.

Generaciones y generaciones han desempeñado trabajos que odiaban para poder comprar cosas que en realidad no necesitan.

Etraf?ma bakt???mda bugüne kadar yaÅŸam?? en güçlü, en ak?ll? adamlar? benzin pompalarken ve garsonluk yaparken görüyorum.

El trabajo era aburrido y le paga una mierda, y por eso el presidente de la junta local del sindicato de operarios de cines independientes y del sindicato nacional de operadores de cine le estaba haciendo un favor laboral a Tyler Durden dándole una diplomática patada en el culo.

Given that aim, technology, as used in this book, means the processes by which an organization transforms labor, capital, materials, and information into products and services of greater value.

All things are hard, it said. There is nothing easy.

Handwriting everything, for me, is psychologically useful because it keeps my writing economical. I think there are word processor styles emerging. Something does seem to happen to a writer's style when he works on a word processor. When you hand write a thing the size of Weaveworld (584 pages) you want to make sure every word counts because it's such a huge labour to get it down.

It was a magnificent operation, from seed to bale, but not one of them could be prideful of their labor. It had been stolen from them. Bled from them. The tunnel, the tracks, the desperate souls who found salvation in the coordination of its stations and timetables—this was a marvel to be proud of. She wondered if those who had built this thing had received their proper reward.