“While we are mindful of the shocking fact that less than one-half of all non-white workers are covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, we do not speak for Negro workers only. A living wage should be the right of all working Americans, and this is what we wish to urge upon our Congressmen and Senators as they now prepare to deal with this legislation.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Statement on minimum wage legislation (18 March 1966)], as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

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Martin Luther King, Jr.658

American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Ci… 1929–1968

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“During the ’thirties the danger of being a marginal worker became increased by social legislation intended to improve conditions on the labor market. The dilemma, as viewed from the Negro angle is this: on the one hand, Negroes constitute a disproportionately large number of the workers in the nation who work under imperfect safety rules, in unclean and unhealthy shops, for long hours, and for sweatshop wages; on the other hand, it has largely been the availability of such jobs which has given Negroes any employment at all. As exploitative working conditions are gradually being abolished, this, of course, must benefit Negro workers most, as they have been exploited most—but only if they are allowed to keep their employment. But it has mainly been their willingness to accept low labor standards which has been their protection. When government steps in to regulate labor conditions and to enforce minimum standards, it takes away nearly all that is left of the old labor monopoly in the “Negro jobs.”
As low wages and sub-standard labor conditions are most prevalent in the South, this danger is mainly restricted to Negro labor in that region. When the jobs are made better, the employer becomes less eager to hire Negroes, and white workers become more eager to take the jobs from the Negroes.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 397

“We believe it is imperative that farm laborers, among the most abused and neglected of all American workers, be included at last among those who benefit from the Fair Labor Standards Act. We want coverage extended to include those millions in retail trades, laundries, hospitals and nursing homes, restaurants, hotels, small logging operations and cotton gins who still work for starvation wages.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Statement on minimum wage legislation (18 March 1966)], as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

“If we play our cards right, we can all get more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps.
No one should ever work.
Workers of the world. . . relax!”

Bob Black book The Abolition of Work

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: No one can say what would result from unleashing the creative power stultified by work. Anything can happen. The tiresome debater's problem of freedom vs. necessity, with its theological overtones, resolves itself practically once the production of use-values is co-extensive with the consumption of delightful play activity. Life will become a game, or rather many games, but not—as it is now — a zero/sum game. An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of productive play. The participants potentiate each other's pleasures, nobody keeps score, and everybody wins. The more you give, the more you get. In the ludic life, the best of sex will diffuse into the better part of daily life. Generalized play leads to the libidinization of life. Sex, in turn, can become less urgent and desperate, more playful.
If we play our cards right, we can all get more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps.
No one should ever work.
Workers of the world... relax! </center

“Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

“There is great dignity in work – and in America, if you want to provide for your family, you should be able to find a full-time job that pays a fair wage. The federal jobs guarantee is an idea that demands to be taken seriously. Creating an employment guarantee would give all Americans a shot at a day’s work and, by introducing competition into the labor market, raise wages and improve benefits for all workers.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

In [Salant, Jonathan D., 11 ways Cory Booker is wooing progressives as he eyes a run for president in 2020, https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/08/11_ways_booker_is_wooing_progressives_in_advance_of_1.html, nj.com, 21 August 2018, August 19, 2018]
2018

“It is now beyond partisan controversy that it is a fundamental individual right of a worker to associate himself with other workers and to bargain collectively with his employer. New laws, in themselves, do not bring a millennium; new laws do not pretend to prevent labor disputes, nor do they cover all industry and all labor. But they do constitute an important step toward the achievement of just and peaceable labor relations in industry.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Address at San Diego Exposition (1935)

“In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Franklin Roosevelt's Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act (16 June 1933) http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odnirast.html <br class="br">1930s <br class="br">Source: [Tritch, Teresa, F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/f-d-r-makes-the-case-for-the-minimum-wage/, March 7, 2014, New York Times, March 7, 2014]

“Congress passed a Fair Labor Standards Act, commonly called the Wages and Hours Bill. That Act”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Fireside Chat in the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards (1938)
Context: After many requests on my part the Congress passed a Fair Labor Standards Act, commonly called the Wages and Hours Bill. That Act — applying to products in interstate commerce-ends child labor, sets a floor below wages and a ceiling over hours of labor. Except perhaps for the Social Security Act, it is the most far-reaching, far-sighted program for the benefit of workers ever adopted here or in any other country. Without question it starts us toward a better standard of living and increases purchasing power to buy the products of farm and factory.

“We are spending 6 per cent more than we are earning... You can also bankrupt a nation by excessive wage demands... That is why I said that it is better to have a lower standard of life for all workers than for some of them to be unemployed.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

1970s
Source: Remarks to the Liaison Committee with the Trades Union Congress at Congress House (20 January 1975), quoted in Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1974–76 (1980), pp. 284-285

“Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

A Footnote To Rally Fellow Socialists, p. 240.
In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981

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