Top 1200 Living Wage Quotes & Sayings

The minimum wage is mostly an entry-level wage for young people.

Prosecutors and public defenders deserve to make a living wage.

In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women.

The people who harvest America's food must be treated with respect and earn a living wage.

You can't receive a living wage unless you work.

I grew up working for the minimum wage at Hardee's and knows first hand how important the minimum wage is. I support a state based minimum wage so every state can set their own minimum wage based on their cost of living.

In the present state of human society, however, We deem it advisable that the wage-contract should, when possible, be modified somewhat by a contract of partnership, as is already being tried in various ways to the no small gain both of the wage-earners and of the employers. In this way wage-earners are made sharers in some sort in the ownership, or the management, or the profits.

Raising the minimum wage means raising the living wage - and that's good news for Ohio.

Massachusetts led the nation passing the first state minimum wage a century ago in June 1912, and with passage of an $11 state minimum wage ... will be leading the nation again with a wage floor that is good for business, good for customers and good for our economy.

The struggle to have a living wage doesn't come easy. You're ready to work, you want it, you seek it... but it's not like it's just given to you.

Even if we raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, it's still hard to prosper on that wage.

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away.

It has now been over 7 years since Congress last raised the minimum wage to its current level of $5.15 per hour. Since that last increase, Congress's failure to adjust the wage for inflation has reduced the purchasing power of the minimum wage to record low levels.

Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market; check or dry up the supply of wage-labor. It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant.

The bottom has fallen out of America's wage floor. And the erosion of the minimum wage has lowered pay and working standards for all of us.

I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well.

Those externalized costs have always included labor. It is only the decline over time of the minimum wage in real dollars that's made the fast food industry possible, along with feedlot agriculture, pharmaceuticals on the farm, pesticides and regulatory forbearance. All these things are part of the answer to the question: Why is that crap so cheap? Our food is dishonestly priced. One of the ways in which it's dishonestly priced is the fact that people are not paid a living wage to process it, to serve it, to grow it, to slaughter it.

If a mother or a caregiver does not have a job that pays a living wage and they cannot afford child care, that is unacceptable.

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

The national minimum wage has not been increased in 9 years. By year's end, 21 States across America will have a minimum wage exceeding the Federal minimum wage.

The overtime threshold is to the middle class as the minimum wage is to low-wage workers.

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.

If you want to be backed by corporations so that you're elected mayor, then it's going to be very problematic for you to support a living wage campaign that would shift the minimum wage to something else.

I believe increasing minimum wage it`s not just the minimum wage, it`s a living wage.

We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living-a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.

It's tough to figure out how do we compete in Europe and North America, when obviously a living wage for us is very different than a living wage in Indonesia.

You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

In the course of the twenty-first century what may be called the "capital wage" could be added to the labor wage and the social wage, so that middle-class Americans - not merely an affluent minority - might derive income from three sources rather than just two.

If people envisage me in the Senate they might think of me as someone who would emulate Paul Wellstone, fighting for the issues he fought for. He was a good friend of mine. We'll be trying to do a couple of things. One is fighting for national health care. Another is fighting to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and changing our trade policies.

I'm looking for a living wage and to continue my work. The frustration comes from when I can't do the things that matter most to me. It's when someone comes and says, 'I will finance your movie if you cast so and so.'

We will never have real safety and security for wage earners unless we provide for safety and security for the wage payers and wage savers.

Millions of Americans do essential work but are not paid a living wage.

I'm in business to make money. However, I'm a mayor who fought for a living wage. And I believe healthcare should be a right.

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.

An industry that cannot pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist.

If you paid Americans a living wage, they would be able to pay for products made by Americans in America.

We will always be a fair wage nation in a low wage region.

I was on the committee that helped raise the minimum wage here in Seattle. I introduced a statewide bill to raise the minimum wage in Washington state my first year in the state senate, and I really believe that raising the federal minimum wage, while not the answer to everything, addresses a lot of the issues at the very bottom.

The 'Living-Wage Campaign' at Harvard is like a Boston winter: you know it's going to strike, but wonder only when and how hard.

If a man or a woman puts in an honest day's work, they should to be able to earn a living wage.

I think it's fair to set limits, so that people cannot receive more than the equivalent of the national average wage while living on benefits.

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.

[A] family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That's wrong. That's why, since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, 19 states have chosen to bump theirs even higher. Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.

Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

Let the D-League be for players who have been in the NBA, who are on the fringe, and that want to fight like heck to get in the NBA. They should have a living wage, not $17,000 to $25,000. A living wage.

The minimum wage should be a living wage.

Every Kentuckian, regardless of background, should have access to a job that pays a living wage.

We must use every tool at our disposal to lift the living standards of low-wage employees.

Very few restaurant workers could even dream of eating in the restaurants they work in. Many do not make a living wage.

Paying people a fair wage is a sign of respect and acknowledgement of the value of people's contributions to the business. When people are treated fairly and with respect, they will provide unparalleled levels of support and commitment inside the business, and to clients and customers. Everyone is more successful when people are paid a living wage.

Regardless of what the minimum wage is, you really have the market wage. And if we're not taking care of our people, then we're going to lose good talent, at every level.

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] would want us to celebrate him, his birth, and his legacy by acting upon his agenda, by realizing the dream, by making the minimum wage a living wage, by having not just family and medical leave, but paid sick leave for our workers, [and] by having quality, affordable child care so that our families, the power of women can be unleashed in our economy and in our society.

The goal of a just society should be to provide satisfying work with a living wage to all its citizens.

I pay a living wage, I believe in healthcare, I declare all my income, and I don't cut corners.

We deserve quality jobs that pay a living wage, lower college tuition, action on climate change, and comprehensive immigration reform.

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.

What the carburetor, sparkplug and self-starter are to an automobile, initiative, private enterprise and executive ability are to industry as a whole, including the wage earner, wage payer, wage spender and wage saver, i.e., the investor. If the sparkplug and self-starter get out of commission, the car will come to a standstill.

You cannot be against a raise in the minimum wage and for cutting government assistance and still say that you are worried about the people living in poverty.

The minimum wage is not something that you want to stay on as a permanent basis. For example, if you have a minimum wage job, you don't stay there 20 or 30 years. You don't put your children through college working on minimum wage.

Those who advocate devaluation are calling for a reduction in the wage levels and the real wage standards of every member of the working class.