Labor service

“ For illustration, factory workers are customarily employed at will, without obligation of employer or employed to continue the relationship when the day's work is done; or, if there is an agreement fixing salary or wages per unit of service, at so much per day, week or month, there may be an indefinite employment terminable by either party at the end of any unit period. ”

“ A wage earner who is working outside his specialty, and who has stated his wish that this be only temporary, shall retain his place on the register on the Department of Labor Distribution until he gets work at his vocation. ”

“ Institutions and persons employing paid labor shall inform the Local Department of Labor Distribution and the respective professional union of each wage earner who quits work, stating the date and the reason thereof. ”

“ We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. ”

“ It is plainly evident that in a country where land was to be had for the asking, fuel for the cutting, corn for the planting and harvesting, and game and fish for the least expenditure of labor, no man would long serve for another, and any system of reliable service indoors or afield must fail. ”

“ The employment of men, the fixing of their wages, hours of labor, and working conditions, the bargaining in respect of these things-whether carried on separately or collectively-each and all constitute intercourse for the purposes of production, not of trade. ”

“ Come into our ranks, ye shirkers, for we now rule this land.
Work or starve, the workers said, for you must earn your bread.
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song;
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song.
All workers, "The Army of Production," in One Big Union, regardless of age, creed, color or sex, is invincible.
Labor is entitled to all it produces. An injury to one is an injury to all. ”

“ Skilled workers have often been able to form skilled labor monopolies, or unions, where their particular skill has been in demand, and have forced their employers to give them shorter hours, higher wages or better working conditions. ”

“ The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 regulates wages and hours not only of employees who are 'engaged in commerce' but also those engaged 'in the production of goods for commerce.' Sections 6, 7, 52 Stat. ”

“ After the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, by interpretations of the Wage and Hour Administrator, it was held that certain preparatory activities such as sharpening the tools, oiling the machinery, preparing his machinery for work, were so closely related to his productive activity that the employer must compensate the employee for it. ”

“ He consolidates and harmonizes every branch of wage labor in the industry, until should he declare the present owners expropriated the industry would go along its accustomed course in the hands of the industrial organization without any shock or jar to the rest of us. ”

“ Although these conditions were favorable at first, owing to the simple reason that the employers had to make them favorable in order to obtain a sufficient number of workers, they soon deteriorated when the supply of available labor power increased. ”

“ The chief objects of the union are indicative of the important demands of the labor reformers in 1877: reduction of the hours of labor; higher wages; factory, mine and shop inspection; abolition of the contract convict labor and truck system; employers to be held responsible for accidents to employees on account of the neglect of employers; prohibition of child labor; establishment of labor bureaus. ”

“ But the organized workers, caring nothing for the interests of any particular employer, demand improved conditions of labor, though the inefficient employer be eliminated and all production be carried on by a few capable employers doing business on a large scale and able to pay the highest wages. ”

“ We must hearten and quicken the spirit and efficiency of labor throughout our whole industrial system by everywhere and in all occupations doing justice to the laborer, not only by paying a living wage but also by making all the conditions that surround labor what they ought to be. ”

“ When we come to questions between labor and its employers, more than this is true. The employers of labor as a class are closely in sympathy with the honest desire of their men to better themselves, and the constant increase in the employment of arbitration to settle difficulties, the experiments in co-operation and profit-sharing, and the furnishing of cheap and good houses to the workers are all evidences of this fact. ”

“ No more truly in the Labor category are the services of “wage-workers” than are those of farmers, of manufacturers, of merchants, of brokers, of bankers, of architects, of lawyers, of physicians, of engineers, of authors, publishers, teachers, or the services of any other useful workers who participate in the intricate processes of Economic production. All are within the Labor category. ”

“ Let us examine more closely this system for the remuneration of labor, as set forth by the English, French, German and Italian Collectivists. [1]
It comes very much to this: Every one works, be it in fields, in factories, in schools, in hospitals or what not. The working day is regulated by the state, to which belong the soil, factories, means of communication and all the rest. Each worker, having done a day's work, receives a labor note, stamped, let us say, with these words: eight hours of labor. ”

“ The rank and, file, too, get the splendid training that is conferred when persons actually and not merely nominally work together for a common end. Their introduction to the great problems of labor is through their practical understanding and handling of those problems as they encounter them in the everyday difficulties of the shop and the factory and as dealt with when they come up before the union meeting or have to be settled in bargaining with an employer. ”

“ The spirit of unrest that I have commended, and which I have termed an American type, is not noisy and clamorous in its nature, and it manifests itself mostly through organizations 858of labor, in demands for adequate or increased compensation, or the fixing of a stated reasonable number of hours to constitute a day’s work. With these purposes, and the aims of Labor-Unions generally, I want to state that I am in the fullest accord. The laborer is worthy of his hire, as the Bible says. ”

“ Also, because of the variety of commercial enterprises which are the legitimate prey of the cooperative society, the demand for skilled workers is much more varied than in the organized labor movement. ”

“ Some twelve or fifteen work in this establishment, and the people sustain them in their operations. Those engaged in the various branches of labor feel confident that the people will patronize them, and carry out what they have agreed in this particular, and they do not trouble themselves about any other employment, or business. ”

“ To distribute the income belonging to the working organization and to provide for the development of the material basis for their work; to distribute income among the working people; to meet the working organization's obligations to the social community; 6. To decide on the admission of working people into the working organization, the cessation of their work, and other labor relations; to determine working hours in the working organization in accordance with general working conditions; to regulate other matters of common concern ”

“ XII. Laborers shall render to their employer, between daylight and dark, ten hours in summer, and nine hours in winter, of respectful, honest, faithful labor, and receive therefor, in addition to just treatment, healthy rations, comfortable clothing, quarters, fuel, medical attendance, and instruction for children, wages per month as follows, payment of one-half of which, at least, shall be reserved until the end of the year:--
Engineers and foremen, when faithful in the discharge of their duties, will be paid $2 per month extra. ”

“ The term is frequently used to designate an ideal employment bureau under public management, which should obviate the common evil that at one and the same time a need for labor exists in some occupations or localities, while many men are unemployed. ”

“ In other words, there is a tendency for work to be highly valued when the number of men available for doing it is small and when the work is performed with the aid of highly perfected machinery, in a community in which able business men are plentiful. Each laborer will find his services easily sold for good wages; for his labor will be an important aid to production. ”

“ Each wage earner, on entering the employment of an enterprise, establishment or institution employing paid labor, shall present his labor booklet to the management thereof, or on entering the employment of a private individual—to the latter. ”

“ I believe that under modern industrial conditions it is often necessary, and even where not necessary it is yet often wise, that there should be organization of labor in order better to secure the rights of the individual wage-worker. ”

“ The labor union movement, unlike the political socialist revolutionary movement, undertakes in its operation to supply labor with a certain working content, which the administrative scheme of industry has excluded from the experience of its workers. ”

“ Labor in the Old and the New Industrial Order.—So long as the system of hand-industry was in existence there was no sharp division of employers and laborers into two separate classes. The employer was himself a workman at the loom, the bench, or the forge. He might have as helpers a couple of apprentices who were learning the trade, and perhaps a journeyman or two; but rarely were there more than a half dozen men or women employed in a single establishment. ”

“ The task is far beyond our present opportunity. It is worth while, however, for present purposes, to delimit the task sharply, and to attempt a brief enumeration of the most important of the conditions which determine, on the one hand, the need of the productive system for labor, and, on the other hand, the supply of labor—that is, of the relative plenty or scarcity of labor. ”

“ “There is this difference— where a man works for himself, or where, when working for an employer, he takes his wages in kind, his wages depend upon the result of his labor. Should that, from any misadventure, prove futile, he gets nothing. When he works for an employer, however, he gets his wages anyhow—they depend upon the performance of the labor, not upon the result of the labor.” ”

“ The wages paid to textile workers, miners, railwaymen, and other industrial workers, with their long hours of labour, have been voiced at our Congresses for some years, and are admitted to be a disgrace to any responsible Government or body of employers. ”

“ The employers' cry has consistently been: 'We claim to manage our business in our own way, and we will allow no outside interference.' Very well, we examine these industries, solely managed by the employing class, and discover what an appalling state exists in practically every industry. ”

“ As I hinted before, in the new order of things all branches of labor will be organized, similar to the arrangements we see to day in large factories, large estates, or institutions of the government. Unnecessary work will be avoided and the reward for work done will be greater. ”

“ To analyze the particulars in the demands of labor is to admit the justice of their complaint in many matters that lie at their basis. The workman demands an adequate wage, sufficient to permit him to live in comfort, unhampered by the fear of poverty and want in his old age. ”

“ And a 'labor organization' means any organization of any kind or any agency or employee representation committee or plan which exists for the purpose in whole or in part of dealing with employers concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment or conditions of work. ”

“ Then the labor union has no other function than to enable the workers to regulate their jobs? None whatever. When a labor union attempts to function in any other capacity it is undertaking something foreign to its purpose, and which retracts from its usefulness as an instrument of labor. 5. What is an adequate wage? A wage which will enable the worker to live according to a decent standard and to make provision for periods of sickness and old age. ”

“ For example, any lawyer or any student of civics who wished to learn about the labor laws of a State, whether, for instance, it had a nine-hour law or not, would look in the index under the head of "Labor." Labor has become, for all our minds, the general head under which that great and important mass of legislation concerning the relation of all employers and employees, and the condition and treatment of mechanical or other labor, naturally falls. ”

“ We hear a great deal of schemes for "improving the condition of the working-man." In the United States the farther down we go in the grade of labor, the greater is the advantage which the laborer has over the higher classes. A hod-carrier or digger here can, by one day's labor, command many times more days' labor of a carpenter, surveyor, bookkeeper, or doctor than an unskilled laborer in Europe could command by one day's labor. ”