Top 203 Quotes & Sayings by Tom Perez - Page 2

The labor movement is our brother's keeper! The labor movement is our sister's keeper!

There's this notion out there - and it's a categorically false notion - that the only business model in the service industry is the minimum-wage business model. I say phooey to that. You go to a Costco store, and you see people there who've been working there for years and years. They're making $15, $20 an hour, plus health benefits.

I share the skepticism that my friends have about NAFTA. It was woefully weak in protecting workers and on the enforcement side. The question is can we meaningfully build a trade regime that has as its North Star protecting American workers and American jobs through meaningful enforcement? I think we can.

I'm often accused of hiring people with civil rights experience, and I do plead guilty to that.

One of the best ways to grow this economy is to put money in people's pockets.

I believe we're making a mistake if we regard job creation and job safety as mutually exclusive or inherently in conflict; they can and they must go hand-in-hand.

We need to be focused in corporate America on the long term.

We're building a movement. It's undeniably a work in progress, but there's a fundamental desire to see capitalism to do something different.

Under the leadership of President Obama and a whole host of partners, including nonprofits, foundations, and advocates, the Department of Labor has made historic investments in community colleges, apprenticeships, coding boot camps, and summer jobs.

Historians have often censored civil rights activists' commitment to economic issues and misrepresented the labor and civil rights movements as two separate, sometimes adversarial efforts. But civil rights and workers' rights are two sides of the same coin.

We have a long and proud tradition as a nation of investing in our human capital so that we can build a thriving middle class. You look at the G.I. Bill after the war - it was an investment in our service members who had served this nation with distinction.

There's a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it's a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability.

I've got so much going on in my day job. And I've been around politics enough to know all the swirl that's fit to print, and so I focus on the reality of the here and now.

Economically Targeted Investing, or ETI, refers to the practice of selecting investments, in part, for their collateral benefits in addition to the investment return for the retirement plan.

The first Friday of every month is what we call Numbers Day - it's the day that the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the monthly jobs report. We have a ritual at the Labor Department - at 8 A.M., we gather around a table in my office, and the commissioner of labor statistics briefs me and the department's senior leadership on the numbers.

There are just way too many people suffering out there.

My parents both came to the United States from the Dominican Republic, and they were deeply grateful for the opportunities this country provided. They raised my siblings and me to want to make a difference and give back. They taught us to work hard and aim high, but to also make sure the ladder was down to help others climb up.

We have to invest in people if we're going to have a country where every person can participate in our economy and share in our prosperity, and we have to break down the many barriers that stand in their way.

Years after my parents made the United States their home, I had the joy of traveling to the Dominican Republic with my kids. They saw where it all started and how their grandparents' values survived and thrived in America.

In terms of intellectual property, so many of the job creators I know are start-ups. In the IP setting, we can meaningfully improve on the status quo, and in so doing, we can help small businesses, large businesses, and those in between.

People have choices. They are going to vote with their feet.

Change very often comes to Washington, not from Washington.

The employers who do best are employers who reject these false choices. It's not a zero-sum world where you either take care of your workers or you take care of your shareholders. You can do good and do well, too.

I met a woman working 30 hours a week, trying to make ends meet, three children. And she slept the night before I met her in her car because she's homeless. We can do better. We can build a nation of shared prosperity.

What we want to do is call attention to the fact that when workers and business work together, when you create a stakeholder model of corporate governance, where you understand that you can do well by your workers, you can do well by your shareholders and you can do well by your customers, that's how we create a virtuous cycle.

Post-military service can be a period of anxiety and uncertainty. So many men and women return and ask themselves: what now? The Labor Department is here to help answer that question with an array of programs designed to clear pathways into the middle class.

It is not possible that it is God's will that women are making 77 cents on a dollar.

It's a false choice to say we either have job safety or job growth. It's a false choice to suggest that the only way for a business to survive is to make sure workers have low wages and little or no benefits. There are ample models across this country where we've demonstrated the contrary.

I had the luxury of skipping the cabinet meeting to attend my daughter's graduation. So many people don't have the luxury of taking an hour away from the workplace to attend indispensable family commitments. We have to change that dynamic.

My mother fiercely valued education. She entered college the same year I did, in 1979, and graduated eight years later. She was a remarkable role model for all of us.

What I hear from employers day in and day out is, 'I need to make sure I have that skilled workforce to compete.' And so we've been able to help so many people punch their ticket to the middle class by transforming our workforce development system for advanced manufacturing jobs and other critical jobs that exist right now.

The differences between Secretary Clinton and Donald Trump in terms of temperament, in terms of values, couldn't be more stark.

I think one of the most important things we can do for people is to expand opportunity - whether it's the opportunity to live a life free of discrimination or the opportunity to get a good job that provides a gateway to the middle class. I've dedicated my career to expanding opportunity, and it's proven incredibly rewarding.

Secretary Clinton is tough, smart, and understands better than any candidate the challenges that parents are talking about around dinner tables and keeping families up at night.

Hillary Clinton is about 'we.' Donald Trump is about 'me.'

My parents didn't feel that they had any choice but to leave the Dominican Republic. They did, however, choose to become Americans, and they lived American values every day.

And as we work together, we will build a better America! As we work together, we will bring the middle class to thrive again! As we work together, we will make sure that everybody has the ladder of opportunity to climb!

We're trying to make sure that financial advisers act like lawyers and doctors. When you go to a lawyer or doctor, they have an obligation to put your best interests first. Financial advisers don't.

A secure retirement is one of the pillars of middle class life. For all too many Americans, however, that pillar needs more support.

When you work extra, you should be paid extra. That's what the Fair Labor Standards Act said. And I've met so many people who are working 60-70 hours a week, and they are effectively working 20 hours for free because they are making a little bit above the minimum wage, because the 2004 regulation enables employers to do that. That's not fair.

When I travel around the country and talk about the need to raise the minimum wage or expand access to paid leave, I often talk about the need for us to reject false choices.

Companies are recognizing that paid leave reduces training and turnover costs, that it's a formula for recruiting and retaining good workers.

As I travel around the country, I am inspired by leaders who know that offering paid leave - whether sick time or family leave - isn't just the right thing to do: it's essential to building an economy that works for everyone.

Nobody who works 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty.

If the opponents of an increase in the minimum wage were correct, then every time you fly to Seattle, you've got to bring a bagged lunch because there shouldn't be any restaurants because they should have all have gone out of business as a result of raising the minimum wage.

Workers all too frequently have been taking it on the chin. They're working hard and falling behind, all too frequently.

There's a long bipartisan tradition of civil rights enforcement.

King had come to Memphis to lend his moral authority to the struggle of striking municipal sanitation workers who were overwhelmingly African-American. They earned poverty wages, endured degrading working conditions, and faced brutal beatings when they tried to organize.

Americans should be able to enjoy a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work. But too many Americans reach retirement without enough savings to supplement their Social Security benefits.

What we're doing here in America is we're making women choose between the family they love and the job that they need. No other nation on the planet is making these choices. In other countries, they've put politics aside and looked at the facts. When women succeed, the world succeeds. We're losing sight of that here in the USA.

Workers are most likely to save for retirement if they have access to a workplace savings plan and are automatically enrolled in that plan.

The overtime rule was frankly diluted in 2004 by a regulation put in place by the Bush administration.

What my parents taught me was that the hallmark of a thriving democracy was an effective and respectful police force.

Progressives believe in making progress, which is why I'm proud to endorse Hillary Clinton, who I know will continue fighting to ensure our children and grandchildren can achieve their highest and best dreams.

The Department of Labor's final conflict of interest rule will ensure that America's workers and retirees receive retirement advice in their best interest.

Protecting the rights of service members was an important part of my work as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

We have to bake labor provisions into the core of an agreement. TPP would do that. Under NAFTA, countries had to simply promise to uphold the laws of their own nations.

When the federal government imposes a mandate on the states or supersedes a state policy, conservatives often rise in protest.

I think public sector workers, our teachers, our firefighters, our home health workers who work for states, they do God's work. They are some of our most important employees.

We need to enact comprehensive immigration reform, to bring people out of the shadows and empower them to more fully and freely participate in their communities and the economy. And we need to invest in our nation's deteriorating infrastructure - investments that would create jobs and benefit all sectors of the economy.