They said it; we posted it: interesting and noteworthy quotes about workplace issues and current events.

"Our government could come up with a more intelligent, far-reaching industrial and foreign trade policy that protects employers who protect people and workers and the environment."

"I think if they could do this business without us, they would, and so making our task as mechanical and simple and low-paying and unartistic as possible."

"There is always the potential that people will get too close in the workplace, that things will get romantic and go awry."

"Mostly it's a sense that the way the system is now, if you can call it a system, is not sustainable."

"My American dream has just been seriously downsized."

"These workers are the backbone for so many industries vital to our nation's economy, yet these same workers are not afforded simple job protections or a social safety net."

"We want to ensure that law-abiding citizens have the opportunity to protect themselves, whether they're leaving work or out shopping."

"If your health holds up, and you have not saved enough, working can be a safety valve."

"Employers seem to be assuming that somebody with a poor credit history is more likely to steal."

"People come to work sometimes in their pajamas, some in their tuxedos."

"We need to appreciate from a progressive perspective that Americans don't relate to class conflict."

"The pendulum of economic power might well begin to shift from capital back to labor."

"I should work less, life is fragile."

"Employer-based coverage is melting away like a Popsicle on the sidewalk in August."

"This is not a systematic way to address the deep problems plaguing the immigration system."

"Employees are injecting their own values and faith and principles much more into the workplace."

"The chaplains do absolutely nothing to challenge those laws and stand with workers--and they can't because they work for the employers."

"There's something in our culture right now which really admires over-the-top pressure, over-the-top performance, over-the-top pay packages."

"Employers should be greatly concerned about how employees perform their jobs...but how employees want to lead their private lives is their own business."

"The whole rail industry is an early precursor of the retirement wave baby boomers will cause in many segments of the U.S. economy."

"Really the best position is what you get in a La-Z-Boy, although that wouldn't work well for someone using a computer."

"Nobody ain't doing nothing for us."

"In a world where health insurance is such a huge deal and becoming more expensive, this is something that employers have to get a handle on."

"This is what unemployment looks like in New York City. I wanted to cry."

"It's not like I have to get dressed up and go to work or anything."

"After a year of adopting anti-family policy after anti-family policy, Wal- Mart adds further insult to injury."

"The strong tradition of solidarity will continue."

"[When] a new system comes along...television or cable, video or cell phones, there's going to be a fight over who gets to stick their spoon into the money stream."

"We think legal is going to be our biggest market going forward."

"Individuals are not seeing their real income go up because employers are spending more on healthcare...and [they] themselves are spending more [too]."

"It seems like getting a full-time job with benefits that also pays a living wage is like a pipe dream here these days."

"We're a clearly discriminatory society, but no one wants to accept it"

"I think it's quite clear to people that their paychecks are being squeezed when they try to meet their family budgets."

"If only Wal-Mart would spend as much money trying to improve the working conditions for employees...as they do on self congratulatory P.R. advisers."

"Wal-Mart's war on [those] who [ask] them to pay a better wage, provide affordable health care, and treat its employees with dignity and respect is a disgrace."

"This verdict will re-energize the plaintiffs' bar in going after Wal-Mart on these issues."

"I understand Wal-Mart has to find a way to grow earnings and increase shareholder value, but I don't believe they should do it on the backs of their long-term employees."

"High schools, universities, parents, and employers are beginning to realize that to be competitive, our educational system needs more than academic theory [...] there needs to be more relevance to the workplace, to what students are interested in and to what the changing economy needs."

"You have big corporations opposing basically modest reforms. This flies in the face of the idea that globalization and corporations will raise standards around the world."

"Too many American families have lost ground in the Bush economy and are working harder than ever just to keep up with rising living expenses."

"I'm concerned that for many working families, this is as good as it gets."

"After three years of denying Californians the minimum wage increase they deserve, Governor Schwarzenegger is now trying to save his own job by giving minimum support to the minimum wage."

"Don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash."

"If we're to preserve the middle class in this country, we need to step in and do what we can as government officials."

"The simple fact is workers are under attack by the most antiworker president and Congress in our history."

"The public has a pretty good nose for tricks and games. And they’re smelling it."

"Amid this country's strong economic expansion, many Americans simply aren't feeling the benefits."

"This attempt at political blackmail is not going to work."

"Pandemic influenza is going to happen. It's like earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis."

"This administration has been more antithetical to the rights of workers than any since [that of] Herbert Hoover."

"No employee should be forced to choose between making a living and increasing the risk of heart disease and lung disease."

"It's getting so you can't survive in this country."

"Most companies in this industry take the view that it is not their job to be the immigration service."

"In the old days, you'd see co-workers dying and you'd see raw exploitation, so you wanted a union to protect you."

"This jury was so shocked and offended they determined that Federal Express needed to be rocked out of its denial."

"This is such sex stereotyping of 30 years ago that it's surprising it would still persist in a corporate culture of such a big company."

"There is no section of the state that is not affected by these potentially catastrophic facilities."

"It's remarkable what gets unleashed when people share in the wealth they help create."

"The average American family is walking a high wire and hoping there won't be a high wind."

"It's the equivalent of the four-minute mile. Once somebody has done it, the psychological barrier is lower for other companies."

"Everybody should be discussing it: why isn't the richest country in the world the healthiest country in the world?"

"I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in an America where we have a few rich people and everyone else."

"In this dispute she's clearly been an enemy of the working poor."

"Nothing I have heard out of Washington works."

"What this is is another P.R. stunt in a litany of P.R. stunts."

"Corporate America can move across the world to find people to work in its factories. But there are some things that you can't outsource."

"It may be that "sick building syndrome" should really be termed "sick job syndrome.""

"This is the worst case of discrimination I've ever seen."

"The credibility of the United States, which takes a strong international stand on human rights issues, is severely damaged by the lack of protection for working people within its own borders."

"Some contractors are paying people. But for every worker who is being treated well, there are 25 who are not. It’s like the Wild West."

"These numbers are just so much worse than I would have thought."

"If you kick out 11.5 million to 12 million people, it will bring this economy to a screeching halt."

"Most fines are so small that they are seen not as deterrents but as the cost of doing business."

"We know our benefits at Wal-Mart stores are not perfect."

"The last three years have been a period of impressive productivity growth and depressive changes in the living standards for most families."

"This time the talent crunch is for real, and it's going to last for decades."

"You just take it day by day. I just hope my benefits last longer than I do."

"Can we still really call America the land of opportunity when hotel workers who work full time for profitable hotel companies cannot afford to make ends meet? This is not just unjust. It is immoral, and we need to do something about it."

"This idea that wages are a signal of coming inflation is a bad habit. Business has control over labor costs more than ever in this global economy, as so many workers unfortunately are finding out."

"Our trade policy is an unbelievable failure that is selling out American jobs and weakening our economy."

"Walt Disney World has a gun-free policy. Mickey Mouse would become a felon in Florida."

"The glory days of surging productivity that kept labor costs down look to be behind us."

"In the immediate future, unions will carry on shriveling in the private sector."

"Ford's always been good to me. Working for them I've put two daughters through college, afforded me a place up north, the whole nine yards. But things have changed."

"There's a growing disparity between the working class and the wealthy in Maryland. We're just looking for some fairness for the little guy here."

"We don't want to kill this giant. We want this giant to behave itself. We want this giant not to be a bully."

"We see this as an individual problem, and then we look to the individual for the solution. The fact is, these are national problems, and they require a national solution. But this is just not on the radar of politicians. It's not an issue with which they concern themselves. But it's the issue the American family is concerned with."

"Every person in management needs to clearly understand that it is absolute insanity to pay out seven-figure bonuses at a time when the company is suffering nine-figure losses, mired in eleven-figure debt and seeking further help from its employees to survive for the long term."

"The mine should have simply been closed. The fines were absolutely absurd, but that's all the inspectors can do. The only other option they have is a closure order, and the managers in Washington won't let them close a mine."

"It was a year of big bonuses and hefty raises for highly skilled professionals and executives, but slim pickings for the ordinary working Joe. Such tepid wage growth is particularly disappointing given the strong productivity advances posted by the private business sector over the last year."

"It's not just one Nurse Ratchett in one plant. It's a systemic problem over their 70 or so plants around the country."

"It's a clear pattern that Wal-Mart has: managers of the individual stores have a labor budget which is so tight that the store can't function without shaving the law, cutting corners and engaging in this practice of super-exploiting the workers. Wal-Mart just can't get out from under their public relations problem."

"Today's verdict affirms that time-theft labor abuses are a chronic and systemic problem for Wal-Mart and its dangerous business model. At Wal-Mart, not only is there no such thing as a free lunch for employees but, in this sad case, there is no lunch at all."

"We wanted to send a very clear message that in California, even really big companies need to follow the law. I personally was hoping that our decision would send a message beyond Wal-Mart. We were ruling on the Wal-Mart case, but I hope other businesses in California are paying attention."

"We will go to binding arbitration only over the dead bodies of our leadership. Nobody decides the contract for transit workers except transit workers."

"We're talking about benefits and retirement. If you don't have them, you may as well be on welfare."

"It is not minor; it really is a lot of pain these people are suffering. Nobody should be working in conditions like that."

"When a company tries to take away a worker's right to the American dream, the worker will struggle and fight for what is his."

"A strike would not be good for the city, a strike would not be good for the union. There will be a lot of people who would lose their jobs during a strike."

"More than likely they’re going to be shooting from a great distance so they’re gonna probably miss."

"This economy is in good shape. We're not going to rest until every American who wants a job can find one."

"The search for solutions to national problems has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans and left and right, but rather with what Americans think is right and wrong."

"The days when blue-collar work could be passed on down the family line, those days are over. Where you did have automobile plants, it was always looked at as an elite job. It was hard work, but good, steady work, with wonderful benefits and good solid pay, and you were in the upper middle class. "

"To call upon taxpayers--most of whom don't have defined-benefit pensions--to pay for the benefits of those who do would be fundamentally unfair."

"Security guards are often the first line of defense, even before the NYPD and Fire Department. But we start at $7.50 an hour on my job site. I don't know how my co-workers can make it on that."

"Employees are these precious commodities right now."

"Big people, you know, we're people. We have feelings. I didn't do anything wrong, but they did stuff wrong and I would like to go back to work."

"Wal-Mart's not a bad apple--it's the very symbol of a rotten system."

"We might be concerned if this group was offering solutions to some of the issues working people face each day, but that is not the case."

"This isn't pop-the-champagne-cork time. His views need to be explored."

"I cannot describe how depressing this has been for me. All your life, you hear about the American dream, and you come here and work hard, and you're 40 and an executive with a company making a good salary, and you've paid all your dues, but you're too old."

"[They] always go after the small stuff when times get tough, because they don't have control over the big stuff, either."

"The factories in China are going to be held to the same standards as the factories in the U.S. There will be a day of reckoning for retailers. If somebody wakes up and finds out that children down the river from that factory where you save three cents a foot [on] garden hose are developing cancers at significant rates so that the American public can save three cents a foot, those things won't be tolerated, and they shouldn't be tolerated."

"How do U.S. firms compete in the global economy? If the only way to compete is with $10 wages, we have a problem that is much larger than just Delphi. We're looking at a society where people exit rather than enter the middle class."

"The data collection issue is more relevant to glass walls than glass ceilings."

"It has nothing to do with your employment, how good your contributions are, how good of a team member you are, so making a policy statement in this case is the right thing to do."

"I don't know how many African Americans are left in the city, but it's not that many. There is not enough labor to rebuild the city, and filling the vacuum are the Hispanics."

"It wasn’t competitive."

"It takes an already depressed area and takes it down. I'd urge Congress to put a ceiling on these extreme profits. Price caps. I support basic Republican ideas, but I've always been of the opinion that you must control the corporations. If the corporations control you, you're in big trouble."

"There's too much loose money. The world's kind of awash in capital right now."

"The good news, if there is any good news, is the rate of increase is lower, and the bad news is that that's the only good news."

"Employers need to step up and recognize that the office place is the new disco."

"I hope they go into bankruptcy--I've got nothing to lose. I'd rather deal with a bankruptcy judge."

"When you read the polls about worker anxiety, and you put that together with rising gasoline prices and declining wages and all the other things that are out there, if we didn't have unions, we'd have to invent them this Labor Day."

"We sacrificed during the bad times. Now it's the good times and it seems we are getting cut out of that."

"We are here today to express our anger and our disgust. Union busting is for corporate criminals who have no values, not for an educational institution."

"It looks like the gains from the recovery haven't really filtered down. The gains have gone to owners of capital and not to workers."

"Every study has shown that, at least where heavy manual labor is not involved, older workers outperform younger workers as a class, with far less absenteeism, far less hopping from job to job, better work ethic. [But] not everybody's gotten that message."

"Frankly, we're hoping for a strike."

"It's not about Wal-Mart--it's about the rest of the labor market. If the labor market was strong, you wouldn't have 11,000 people applying for 400 jobs."

"We can never insure 100% of the population against 100% of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age."

"If hard-working men and women need to march on the street to let the public know about a labor dispute, they should be able to do so without interference. Our nation is built on democracy and liberties, and one of the greatest liberties we have is the freedom of speech. That’s why I’m proud to sign legislation that secures our workers’ fundamental right to picket."

"If job cuts in the auto industry continue and we start to see consistently high job-cut numbers from the top three job cutters, it should set off some relatively loud alarm bells about the state of the job market and economy."

"If you are going to criminalize me for wanting a better life for my children, for wanting a roof over my head and food on the table, then go ahead and criminalize me. We believe in the American dream more than most people who've been here their whole life."

"Employers are gloating about this."

"Maybe all they're doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

"[Employees can no longer be] treated as second-class citizens because they're not putting out."

"The largest setback for players that I've seen in collective bargaining."

"Employers are free to be unfair. Other than some protected classes, there isn't a great deal employees can do about it. We saw it first on the playground, when the popular people who were the leaders chose other people like them as friends."

"Basically you do what you have to do...I'm getting good benefits."

"The cuts are not necessarily an indication of economic weakness, but rather the by-product of numerous trends, including changing consumer demand, outsourcing, mergers and acquisitions, automation and consolidation. We are also starting to see job cuts resulting from higher health care costs as well as higher oil and natural gas prices."

"If everybody with HIV who works in the food service industry didn't show up for work tomorrow, America would starve."

"It shows that when you work at Wal-Mart, you can neither afford a decent standard of life or even have a life."

"This is pretty disgusting. They saw a way to get out of having the union, and they took it. They are as disgusting as Wal-Mart."

"How many more jobs are we going to lose? It's breathtaking the number of jobs we've lost yet nothing has come of the promises to get trade right."

"I call it legalized crime. I lost almost all my United stock value in the bankruptcy, and here's another part of the retirement I was promised that is gone. And now my Social Security is at risk. Where does it all end? You feel brutalized by the system."

"New York is like the wild, wild West. The violations are on such a scale that nobody can monitor all of them."

"This is a blue-collar trade that nobody thinks about. There's too many Gen-Xers that want to stay home in their underwear and be Internet millionaires."

"The simple principle these cases stand for is one that goes to the fabric of our community, the fabric of what New York City, New York State, hopefully the whole nation, stands for. Race, ethnicity, cannot, should not and will not be a legitimate basis for determining who is hired, who is referred, who is fired."

"The federal government is not living up to its responsibility, so the states are acting."

"This crisis has now grown so large that it's no longer just a health issue. It's a major economic issue affecting the deficit, jobs, and our global competitiveness."

"Wal-Mart is the biggest threat to our members' way of life."

"It singles a company out in a way that is discriminatory."

"You should take your passport when you go to work because all your rights as an American citizen disappear the second you walk through the office door."

"The American people have to understand where we are and where we're headed. No republic in the history of the world lasted more than 300 years. Eventually, the crunch comes."

"If economic mobility continues to shut down, not only will we be losing the talent and leadership we need, but we will face a risk of a society of alienation and unhappiness. Even the most privileged among us will suffer the consequences of people not believing in the American dream."

"If we didn't respect the unions and the labor standards, we would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs."

"The economy is growing and real output is up. But the distribution of income, in terms of how much is going to workers--well, very little has gone to the typical worker."

"In today's global economy, employees are seeing longer working hours, greater job insecurity due to job exporting and fewer rewards and opportunity. I'm worried that the stress levels of employees continues to rise and we are seeing a further eroding of the 50-hour work week."

"If the initiative goes on the ballot and public employee unions have to fight for their right to participate in politics in California, that's going to be nuclear war."

"In America, we just don't have enough time off, period."

"Henry Ford made sure he paid his workers enough so that they could afford to buy his cars. Wal-Mart is doing the polar opposite of Henry Ford. Wal-Mart brags about how its low prices help poor Americans, but its low wages are helping increase the number of Americans in poverty."

"Male executives who won't assign a high-maintenance client to a woman with kids think they are empathetic, when they are just being patronizing."

"I never did worry. They stood by me through the whole thing. Whenever I was able to work, all I had to do was call and tell them I could come. I told them I could win a million-dollar lottery and I'd still come to work."

"[About the workplace]: Don't assume that you are perfectly free to say and do whatever you want. Nine to five is not the same as five to nine. It's naive to think you work in a democracy."

"[A]n expression of personal opinion does not constitute political activity merely because it is disseminated to two dozen individuals with one or several computer keystrokes."

""It's rage. It's helpless rage." [describing United flight attendants' reaction to the airline's settlement with the U.S. government to terminate four employee pension plans.]"

"I told them I was going to give them something to be afraid of Christians about."

"If no one is watching the children, it doesn't matter how many different jobs are created because people will not be able to work."

"It is obvious that the Department of Labor's assignment of 48 new staff to audit unions, starting with the AFL-CIO, is pure political payback for the labor movement's opposition to the president's antiworker policies."

"This is America. Your personal time should be your own."

"This is reverse Robin Hood. We're taking money from the middle class and giving it to the super-rich."

"I had a fool for a client."

"Maybe we should start getting used to disappointing job numbers."

"Today's theatrics once again reveal that many labor unions are more concerned with partisan politics than the interests of their own members. Recent activities to intimidate organizations that support the president's Social Security efforts amount to thuggery and do nothing to encourage public discourse."

"This decision is a slam-dunk victory for everyone who cares about equal opportunity."

"It's a shame that people have to get killed and hurt trying to make a dollar in these plants, but that's part of reality."

"It's unconscionable. Collective bargaining is how we built the middle class in this country."

"The 401(k) is a lot more unequal than the defined-benefit system. The continuing transformation of the pension system will exacerbate the trend."

"Today we are acknowledging that our compliance program did not include all the procedures necessary to identify independent floor cleaning contractors who did not comply with federal immigration laws."

"If we have learned one thing in the past year, it is that every benefit and condition of employment can be taken away at the whim of any new management if we don't have a union to represent us and the guarantees of a union contract."

"Instead of terminating pensions, maybe we should explore terminating the employment of United's top management, who have mired the company in bankruptcy for more than two years."