Top 66 Sharan Burrow Quotes

You can’t deny that if you have, you know, people who think it’s okay to talk about women, to disregard the rights of workers, we’re in trouble as an inclusive world.

A new model of business and economic development must ensure everybody‘s sons and daughters are treated as we would expect for our own.

If there are not jobs or adequate forms of social protection, there is not enough income to create the consumption base that drives demand and sustainable economic growth.

We need to decarbonise our societies and economies.

There is no doubt that the participation of women in the workforce is a serious productivity boost, but to enable this ambition, there must be investment in care – child care, aged care, disability care, health, and education – which are essential social support structures to enable women to work.

For the unions, it is simple. There are no jobs on a dead planet.

Programs that reduce energy and water use and increase green agriculture and transport have huge job-creating potential.

If multilateral institutions cannot bring about peace and the rule of law because of the vested interests of their members, then both national democracy and global governance will continue to be rocked by crises.

Many women drop out of the work force altogether, which holds back our economy with a loss of skills and personnel.

Collective bargaining, and the fundamental human right, freedom of association, is seen as an anathema to American business, and people just – it doesn’t seem to register that there’s no universal social safety net that people can touch.

Technology can be used to make people’s lives easier, to reduce inequality, to facilitate inclusion, or to solve intractable global problems, but without dialogue and governance, it can be used against humanity – the choice on how we use technology is ours.

Technological developments are changing the way we live, and there is much talk of digitalisation and the disruptive business models enabled by smart phones, tablets, computers, and the ‘Internet of things.’

Poor people around the world spend more on energy because they lack the capital to buy a more expensive energy-efficient product.

Democracy is rarely easy, nor swift.

Climate impacts hit working people first, and with extreme weather events, changing seasons, and rising sea levels, whole communities stand on the front lines.

Large swathes of people losing faith in democracy is a dangerous thing. Conflict, desperation, totalitarianism are the products of that loss of faith.

We may be living in a world of disposable electronics, but working people are not disposable commodities.

You cannot fuel demand, or consumption-led demand, on credit forever.

We need economic growth, yes, but growth can be jobless, so a sustainable development framework for employment must include a job creation strategy.

When governments are cowed or simply don’t care to enforce fundamental human and labour rights or to ensure corporate tax is paid so that they can invest in social protection and in the health and education of their people, they cede control to corporate greed.

The environment, stabilizing the climate, needs urgent attention from all of us.

South Carolina is a ‘right to work’ state – a misnomer of a phrase, as the laws limits union representation of workers. It does does not guarantee workers a job or fair wages and conditions.

We need a multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, not vested interests in making citizens pay for formerly free services or restrictions to their capacity to share information.

Care work contributes enormously to the well-being of our societies and to the sustainability of our economies.

Work has always been influenced by technology and will continue to be.

#MeToo shows this bias is systemic, that people get away with violence against women, get away with discrimination – whether in work or society in general – because, for too long, silence has been the answer.

Market-led globalization is leading to a race to the bottom, where efficiency and profit matter more than a fair share for working people.

Wealth is being generated off the back of oppression and abuse.

When corporations refuse to practice due diligence by not establishing grievance mechanisms for remedy of abuses against the hidden 94% of their workforce in their global supply chains, they perpetuate a depraved model of profit-making that has driven inequality to a level now seen as a global risk in itself.

Growing inequality is exacerbated by the companies who simply treat workers as commodities, and our governments are cowered by their demands to perpetuate this model of greed.

Workers in Myanmar must have an effective remedy when their rights are violated.

Public opinion must be heard.

It’s never been clearer that unrestrained market forces do not produce the kind of societies we aspire to – economically stable and socially inclusive, where citizens have access to secure jobs with the dignity of a fair wage and a welfare safety net.

Until you separate the speculative behaviour of the financial sector from the real economy and the financing of the real economy, then we are not going to see the kind of stability or the capacity to drive genuine, income-led growth as opposed to debt-fuelled, speculative behaviour.

All business must have a social license to operate.

Globalization can be shaped to ensure that people matter.

It seems evident that the IMF has learned nothing from its inequality-inducing policies during the 1980s debt crises in Latin America nor from its recession-deepening response to the East Asian crisis of the late 1990s. In both regions, the IMF has become synonymous with making bad situations worse.

With global rules for global supply chains, we can end corporate greed.

A binding treaty and mandatory human rights due diligence would clean up slavery in global supply chains. Workers demand it, and consumers demand it.

We know how to build economies. It requires investment in jobs. The biggest medium-term multiplier is infrastructure.

Football, or soccer as it is known, is a game of two halves. It’s a game with rules and a referee. FIFA, the governing body for football, follows neither the rule of law or has the oversight of a referee.

When work is not underpinned by social protection, people risk falling into poverty traps.

When working men and women have secure jobs with living wages and social protection, they can invest in the economy at levels which will increase demand and help overcome the twin challenges of ageing populations and economic stagnation.

A new business model based on old principles of social justice where people matter – now that’s a revolutionary way to reduce inequality.

The competitive pressure to produce, buy, and sell to our global multi-national companies is so intense that contractors in supply chains are motivated to pay low wages, intensify exploitative conditions, keep workers fearful with insecure work contracts, or simply sack workers who have formed a union to fight back.

The rules of the global economy are rigged against those who have to work to earn a living and in favour of multinational corporations and the ultra-rich.

When we see the banks get bailed out with seemingly no consequences while ordinary people pay the price with job and wage cuts through austerity measures, who could blame a person for wondering where the loyalties of their elected leaders really lie?

T-Mobile U.S.A. is one company that uses fear and intimidation to scare workers away from union representation.

As economists bandy about terms like ‘recapitalization,’ ‘credit lines,’ and ‘liquidity,’ families are facing brutal cuts to their social services and welfare payments, losing their homes, wondering how their kids will make their way in the world.

Global supply chains are founded on a Darwinian model that rewards employers who treat working people as less than human.

No country can afford to lose a generation to unemployment.

The cycle of jobless youth, uncertainty about the future, depressing consumption, and weak investment and stresses on both the supply and demand side of economies are all thorns in the wheel of capitalism.

When women are expected to bear the burden of unpaid work, everyone loses.

Where laws recognize rights to collective bargaining, the truth is that employee rights to negotiate with employers are denied in many countries.

We all need to work together, because there are no jobs on a dead planet; there is no equity without rights to decent work and social protection, no social justice without a shift in governance and ambition, and, ultimately, no peace for the peoples of the world without the guarantees of sustainability.

As we contemplate a world which is still choosing to deploy technological innovation in a way that deepens inequality and divisions within and between nations, we need to set global foundations back on track.

If you think the dominant orthodoxy – shrink your economy, render workers jobless, impoverish families, and still grow – is an oxymoron… then you would be right.

Globalization has much potential. It could be the answer to many of the world’s seemingly intractable problems. But this requires strong democratic foundations based on a political will to ensure equity and justice.

If you put stimulus into an economy, you know there is a time lag in terms of depending where you invest it. If it’s family transfers, it might be quick. If it’s infrastructure, it might be two, three, five years.

My job is to represent working people.

Governments that fail to provide jobs to those who are willing and able to work begin to lose their legitimacy and will face the anger of the electorate.

I’ve had an enormously privileged working life.

Politically, we have seen the impact of social media organizing people through the Arab Spring.

When minimum living wages, bargaining for fair wages, pensions, and job security are denied in too many countries, it is not rocket science to understand the drivers of inequality.

The corporate community understands the need for rules. Indeed, it argues for regulation to protect intellectual property, physical property rights, and contract law. So why does it oppose global regulation to protect people and the environment?

We all eat breakfast in the morning, we all go to sleep at night, and we all want our kids to have opportunities that we didn’t.