#labour

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes. ↗

— James Madison

#any #apt #classes #fill #good

This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people’s convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that ‘they’ will never allow him to do this, that, and the other. Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union. I was told immediately that ‘they’ would never allow it. Who were ‘they’? I asked. Nobody seemed to know, but evidently ‘they’ were omnipotent. ↗

— George Orwell

#labour #servility #trade-unions #wage-labour #working-class

Essentially we need a new social consensus for economic reform as New Labour has achieved in Britain. ↗

— Peter Mandelson

#britain #consensus #economic #essentially #labour

Un des problèmes essentiels qui se posent à propos de la femme, c'est la conciliation de son rôle reproducteur et de son travail producteur. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#gender-roles #labour #family

Speaking the words he had been taught, directing them no longer upward but to the earth on which he knelt, he prayed: 'For what we are about to receive make us truly thankful.' ... he... felt his heart suddenly flow over with thankfulness... like a gush of warm water... All that remains is to live here quietly for the rest of my life, eating food that my own labour has made the earth to yield. All that remains is to be a tender of the soil. ↗

— J.M. Coetzee

#gardening #grace #labour #food

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. ↗

— George Orwell

#labour #pacifism #peace #war #intelligence

Abortion is an issue of conscience for the Labour party. ↗

— Diane Abbott

#conscience #issue #labour #labour party #party

La femme ne peut être émancipée que lorsqu'elle prend part dans une grande mesure sociale à la production et n'est plus réclamée par le travail domestique que dans une mesure insignifiante. ↗

— Engels Friedrich

#gender-equality #labour #production #equality

It's estimated that there may be two hundred and fifty million children in the world engaged in some form of exploitative child labour. ↗

— Carol Bellamy

#children #engaged #estimated #exploitative #fifty

In individual industries where female labour pays an important role, any movement advocating better wages, shorter working hours, etc., would not be doomed from the start because of the attitude of those women workers who are not organized. ↗

— Clara Zetkin

#any #attitude #because #better #doomed