Workers Quotes

“Hundreds of people began to care in a personal way about the suffering of farm workers because they care about you and learned that you were willing to go to jail with striking farm workers,” Chris wrote the delegates from the Jesuit spirituality conference. He apologized profusely for having misled them into thinking they would be out in a few days. But no one complained. They told Chris the two weeks ranked among the most moving times of their lives. The gripes came from those who had opted for the picket line that obeyed the injunctions. They had been forced to make the decision too fast, they grumbled to Chris.Chris saw the saga as a modern parable, and he loved to tell the story: The people who played it safe, unwilling to risk arrest, ended up feeling cheated and angry. Those willing to sacrifice emerged from the ordeal enriched, certain that the experience had changed their lives.”

“The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is "free," what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.”

“Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.”

“During my five years on Mauna Kea, workers routinely displayed the symptoms of Cerebral Hypoxia”

“Corrupt utility companies require a corrupt legal system to protect them from their own sickened workers and the masses.”

“Another Mexican American in another class, approaches Victor after class, carrying his copy of Fahrenheit 451, required reading for the course. The student doesn't understand the reference to a salon. Victor explains that this is just another word for the living room. No understanding in the student's eyes. He tries Spanish: la salon. Still nothing. The student has grown up as a migrant worker. And Victor remembers the white student who had been in his class a quarter ago, who had written about not understanding racism, that there was none where he had grown up, in Wennatchee, that he has played with the children of his father's migrant workers without there being any hostility. His father's workers. Property. Property that doesn't know of living rooms. And Victor thought of what the man from Wennatchee knew, what the ROTC Mexican American knew, what the migrant worker knew. And he thought of getting up the next morning to go with Serena to St. Mary's for cheese and butter. And he knew there was something he was not doing in his composition classrooms.”

“The urban capitalists and the bourgeoisie differ in linguistic habits and dress from the workers. They don't live together in one integrated society, but as two separate societies that speak different languages both literally and metaphorically. The urban capitalists do not know the life led by workers. Workers experience hardships that are unheard of amongst villagers and these evoke malice in the urban workers, easily stirred by union leaders who use them to ride to power. Villagers are different. Teaching the villagers cannot easily change what they have inherited from the environment and the past they have known and in which they have grown up. The village entrepreneur wore only a sarong in the past. Some of them wore a sarong and slung another over a shoulder. The poor villager's dress is also a sarong. The village entrepreneur speaks Sinhalese, which is the language of the poor villager too. On the day of the traditional New Year, the children of both the rich and the poor in the village eat together and play together in the homes of the villager elite. All this subdues feelings of resentment against the wealthy villagers. It's true that villagers suffer a great deal on account of their poverty. But unlike the urban poor, poverty amongst the villagers does not incite malice toward the wealthy, due to the rural way of life.”

“Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.”

“Just like in the workplace, women who are good workers are the best workers.”