A Quote by Fiorello H. La Guardia

An industry that cannot pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist. — © Fiorello H. La Guardia
An industry that cannot pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist.
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.
People will say 'how can you have a plane when your workers are on minimum wage?' I said 'but I don't set the minimum wage.' If the minimum wage would be the living wage, then the Government who set the rules should set it at the living wage. That's how I look at it.
Our party feels that we need to have fair compensation, living wage, good benefits, and decent treatment of workers, and that we can do that and still be competitive on a global basis.
Most employers I speak to, they want to create jobs and give decent salaries. Some small and medium companies say to me they cannot afford to pay the living wage. I say "what about if I gave you a business rate cut?" and they say, yes, ok. We want companies which are skilled up, generating more profit, more corporation tax - we should not be embarrassed at success, as long as they pay their taxes.
It was a Conservative government that in 2016 introduced the national living wage, giving Britain's lowest-paid workers the biggest pay rise in 20 years.
I reject the idea that any job is too hard or too dirty for American workers to do. American workers just expect and demand to be paid a decent wage.
People are so cheap. Everyone wants quality, no one wants to pay for it. Here's the suburban dream-- to hire great workers who are such meek morons that they don't have the guts to ask for a living wage.
There should be no unemployment. There is large percentage of labor now which cannot make a living because wages are not high enough. That is industry's 2nd job. 1st job is to make good product. 2nd pay a good wage.
Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him.
They're rights that should be endemic to any democracy. The right to a free quality education, from elementary school right through higher education. The right to have a decent social wage. The right to a decent job. Political rights; the right to vote. These are all parts of the social contract, from the New Deal onwards, that never went far enough.
Low-wage workers are also consumers. It's just common sense: when these workers have more take-home pay it leads to spending that trickles up to benefit many small, locally owned businesses.
[E]conomic liberty and creative entrepreneurship are the basis of any solution to today's social and economic difficulties. Blaming business, setting wages, and attempting to run the economy by decree from Washington only exacerbates the problems. Consider the minimum wage. It seems so simple: Tell business to pay its workers more. But a hike in the minimum wage is essentially a tax, punishing precisely those companies that hire workers with the least skills.
No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country... By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.
Union membership is not the sole guarantor of job security and a living wage, but nonunion factory workers do not enjoy the same protections as union workers. They're subject to exploitation, underpayment and lower standards of workplace safety - which is also often the case for manufacturing workers outside the United States.
Improving the outlook for U.S workers isn't about creating millions of minimum-wage jobs. It is about creating sustainable, skilled employment that allows Americans to earn a fair wage with benefits that allows them to pay for housing and food on the table and sustain a middle-class lifestyle.
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.
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