Raising the minimum wage isn’t just pro-worker; it’s pro-economic growth.

Clearly, apprenticeships are a win-win: They provide workers with sturdy rungs on that ladder of opportunity and employers with the skilled workers they need to grow their businesses. And yet in America, they’ve traditionally been an undervalued and underutilized tool in our nation’s workforce development arsenal.

The United States is one of the few nations on the planet where paid family and medical leave or earned sick time is not the law of the land.

With patience, persistence, and partnership, we can create economic opportunity for every person willing to work hard for it.

We need to do more to support working families, like guarantee access to paid sick and parental leave and make sure every parent has access to quality, affordable child care.

Donald Trump has shown no interest in working toward increasing the minimum wage, no interest in doing anything but immigrant baiting, no interest in doing anything but filling the swamp with a band of billionaires who are simply trying to help the wealthy.

There is no price tag on an American life – whether it’s in Florida, Texas, or Puerto Rico.

The best way to promote and protect opportunity is through collaboration, consensus-building, and pragmatic problem-solving. Throughout nearly 30 years in public service, I have approached tough challenges by making room for as many people as possible around the table in search of common ground.

When you put more money in the pockets of working families, they spend it on groceries, gas, school supplies, and other goods and services. And that helps businesses grow and create jobs. So many forward-looking employers, large and small, understand this.

The differences between Secretary Clinton and Donald Trump in terms of temperament, in terms of values, couldn’t be more stark.

For many people, and particularly in communities of color, the basic bargain of America – that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can share in the nation’s prosperity – has become a raw deal. That’s what President Obama’s opportunity agenda is all about – making good on our country‘s half of the basic bargain.

Our message in rural America is just as powerful as it is in urban America. But because we haven‘t been a physical presence there in any sustained way, we have a lot of voters there who no longer believe that the Democratic Party is working for them.

We’re the party that has fought for Medicare. We’re the party that has fought for Social Security. The Republicans have tried to privatize Social Security and voucherize Medicare.

I met a woman working 30 hours a week, trying to make ends meet, three children. And she slept the night before I met her in her car because she’s homeless. We can do better. We can build a nation of shared prosperity.

In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works a full time job should have to live in poverty. That’s a fundamental value proposition, an article of faith in our country that I know an overwhelming majority of Americans agree on.

The employers who do best are employers who reject these false choices. It’s not a zero-sum world where you either take care of your workers or you take care of your shareholders. You can do good and do well, too.

One of the best ways to grow this economy is to put money in people’s pockets.

I am proud of our diversity, and when you attack the federal workforce, you are having significant impact on women – many of whom are single moms working to support their family – and you’re having a significant impact on communities of color.

I happen to think Donald Trump is crazy, but that’s not an economic message.

Historians have often censored civil rights activists‘ commitment to economic issues and misrepresented the labor and civil rights movements as two separate, sometimes adversarial efforts. But civil rights and workers’ rights are two sides of the same coin.

People are so sick of these Twitter tirades. They want leaders they can be proud of.

Helping veterans isn’t just a part of my job. For me, it’s personal. It’s in my blood.

As long as we’re united, and as long as we continue to organize, invest, and lead with our values, we’ll be unstoppable.

Of all the tough decisions in life, choosing between the job you need and the family you love should not be one of them.

Our economic future and our energy future are one in the same, and it’s a future America can’t shrink from. We must shape it, just as we’ve always done. We have to protect our planet from the threat of climate change and ensure that workers have the skills to compete for good middle-class jobs.

One of the most pervasive and damaging trends we are seeing in the 21st-century workplace is the deliberate misclassification of workers by employers looking to shift responsibility and cut costs.

The overtime rule was frankly diluted in 2004 by a regulation put in place by the Bush administration.

If Donald Trump wants to raise the minimum wage to $15, yes, I will work with Donald Trump.

The 3.5 million people in Puerto Rico are American citizens. They deserve fair and equal treatment as Americans.

Hillary Clinton is about ‘we.’ Donald Trump is about ‘me.’

To realize President Obama‘s vision of opportunity for all, it’s all about making the right match. The way we do that is through job-driven training – connecting ready-to-work Americans with ready to be-filled jobs. It helps more people secure a foothold in the middle class and helps businesses to profit and grow.

Extending emergency unemployment benefits isn’t just the right thing to do for our families – it’s the smart thing to do for our economy.

When I taught a civil rights class at the University of Maryland Law School, I would do an exercise with my students. I’d write ‘civil rights’ on the board and ask them to tell me what immediately came to mind.

Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable.

What my parents taught me was that the hallmark of a thriving democracy was an effective and respectful police force.

Donald Trump is anathema to America.

We can’t understand what we’ve accomplished on civil rights without telling the story of Bayard Rustin. And now, we must write the next chapter in the American civil rights story by drawing strength and inspiration from his moral courage.

Nobody who works 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty.

I like to call the Department of Labor the Department of Opportunity, and that means opportunity for everyone – no matter whom you love.

Economically Targeted Investing, or ETI, refers to the practice of selecting investments, in part, for their collateral benefits in addition to the investment return for the retirement plan.

Employers have recognized for some time that it’s smart business to have a diverse workforce – one in which many views are represented and everyone’s talents are valued. Well, disability is part of diversity.

We have a long and proud tradition as a nation of investing in our human capital so that we can build a thriving middle class. You look at the G.I. Bill after the war – it was an investment in our service members who had served this nation with distinction.

Smart growth is having the courage to say yes and having the courage to say no.

Workers all too frequently have been taking it on the chin. They’re working hard and falling behind, all too frequently.

When I travel around the country and talk about the need to raise the minimum wage or expand access to paid leave, I often talk about the need for us to reject false choices.

It stands to reason: Higher wages means higher loyalty and morale, which means higher productivity, which means a more profitable business.

People have choices. They are going to vote with their feet.

Public service has allowed me to put values my parents taught me into action.

My parents, fleeing a repressive regime in the Dominican Republic, were embraced by this country and taught us to love it in return. After my father served proudly in the U.S. Army, they settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and were able to live the American Dream.

During Black History Month, I’m reminded yet again of the ways that the struggle for civil rights is interwoven with the struggle for workers’ rights.

I’ve memorized ‘Hamilton.’

How can we say we’re for family values when so many women in the United States have to jeopardize their livelihood to take a few weeks off from work after giving birth? Should a man have to sacrifice his economic security to take care of his sick mother or his wife returning wounded from active duty?

Here’s the reality: when Hillary Clinton won the nomination, the DNC handed her insufficient and substandard tools for success.

Workers are baking the pie of prosperity, but they’re not sharing in those dividends. That’s unfair.

If you’re going to be a big tent party as we are, and you’re going to help elect democrats who have generated support in their communities… the will of those voters is the will that we must respect.

We’re building a movement. It’s undeniably a work in progress, but there’s a fundamental desire to see capitalism to do something different.

If I don’t get something done at the office at 4:30 in the afternoon, I can go back to it at 10:00 in the evening.

Workers are most likely to save for retirement if they have access to a workplace savings plan and are automatically enrolled in that plan.

We believe that health care is a right, not a privilege.

When you recruit good candidates and you have a good message and you have energy and organization and partnership, you always have a fighting chance.

It was a privilege to serve as the assistant attorney general for civil rights, a role that allowed me to enforce the Civil Rights Act and help make its promise a reality.

Post-military service can be a period of anxiety and uncertainty. So many men and women return and ask themselves: what now? The Labor Department is here to help answer that question with an array of programs designed to clear pathways into the middle class.

A secure retirement is one of the pillars of middle class life. For all too many Americans, however, that pillar needs more support.

Community colleges provide higher education where people live, helping to build strong ladders of opportunity that allow people to secure a foothold in the middle class.

When my grandchildren ask, ‘Where were you when Donald Trump took a sledgehammer to Lady Liberty?’ I want to make sure I can tell them I was there protecting America.

We have to invest in people if we’re going to have a country where every person can participate in our economy and share in our prosperity, and we have to break down the many barriers that stand in their way.

Secretary Clinton is tough, smart, and understands better than any candidate the challenges that parents are talking about around dinner tables and keeping families up at night.

Our message has been muddled, especially in 2016. Voters in Ohio heard from Trump, ‘I’m going to save your coal jobs.’ And while that was a lie, what it told them is, ‘I’m going to feel your pain.’ What they heard from the Democratic side was, ‘Vote for us because Donald Trump is crazy.’

You’re more likely to see someone fatally struck by lightning than witness a case of in-person voter fraud.

For the purposes of the FMLA, marriage will now be determined based on where the couple got married, not on where an employee lives. This is called a ‘place of celebration‘ rule.

If the opponents of an increase in the minimum wage were correct, then every time you fly to Seattle, you’ve got to bring a bagged lunch because there shouldn’t be any restaurants because they should have all have gone out of business as a result of raising the minimum wage.

Years after my parents made the United States their home, I had the joy of traveling to the Dominican Republic with my kids. They saw where it all started and how their grandparents‘ values survived and thrived in America.

On Veterans Day, I can’t help think of my uncles who volunteered for the service after fleeing a brutal regime in the Dominican Republic. They hadn’t been in America long, but they were already so grateful for its opportunities that they were eager to serve.

From the outset, the Obama administration has recognized that building a robust skills infrastructure means building strong partnerships with community colleges.

If Donald Trump wants to acknowledge that we have a pay gap for women and we need to address it, I would work with Donald Trump.

We’re the party that’s fought for increased wages, fought for the union movement, fought to make sure that collective bargaining is not eviscerated, it’s strengthened. And when we communicate those messages, we succeed.

The Democratic Party has learned from the terrible mistakes of the past. Our platform requires that we honor, fulfill, and strengthen the federal government‘s trust responsibility to American Indians. We take this responsibility seriously.

Trust is not something that’s given because you win an election; it’s something you have to earn.

There’s a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it’s a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability.

We need to see the FLSA and the minimum wage as part of a larger struggle to cut poverty and to address the challenge of income inequality.

Mandatory arbitration clauses I think, more often than not, work to the detriment of working people.

It’s wrong that so many hardworking people – people working full-time, or even multiple jobs – need public assistance just to survive.

Everything has changed in recent decades – the economy, technology, cultural attitudes, the demographics of the workforce, the role of women in society and the structure of the American family. It’s about time our laws caught up. We watch ‘Modern Family’ on television, but we’re still living by ‘Leave It To Beaver‘ rules.

We have to have a conversation where we bring in all the stakeholders and say, ‘What is the vision of the Democratic Party?’

Growing up in Buffalo, I saw shuttered factories that once housed thousands of steel manufacturing jobs. I remember the hollowing-out of the middle class in our community. I witnessed hope turn to hardship as a once-thriving city reckoned with a fast-changing world.

If you’re one car accident away from poverty, you’re on a high wire without a safety net. And that’s a challenging proposition.

When we talk about the kind of folks whose lives will be made better by raising the minimum wage, we’re not talking about a couple teenagers earning extra spending money to supplement their allowance. We’re talking about providers and breadwinners. Working Americans with bills to pay and mouths to feed.

People who work full-time in America should not have to live in poverty – simple as that. Too many jobs don’t pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead. Too many people are finding the rungs on the ladder of opportunity further and further apart.

King had come to Memphis to lend his moral authority to the struggle of striking municipal sanitation workers who were overwhelmingly African-American. They earned poverty wages, endured degrading working conditions, and faced brutal beatings when they tried to organize.

There are just way too many people suffering out there.

Americans should be able to enjoy a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work. But too many Americans reach retirement without enough savings to supplement their Social Security benefits.

I’ve had jobs that allow me the flexibility to achieve work-life balance, to be there when one of the kids sinks a jump shot or for the parent-teacher meetings. I can move tasks around. If I don’t get something done at the office at 4:30 in the afternoon, I can go back to it at 10:00 in the evening.

I’ve got so much going on in my day job. And I’ve been around politics enough to know all the swirl that’s fit to print, and so I focus on the reality of the here and now.

I had the luxury of skipping the cabinet meeting to attend my daughter‘s graduation. So many people don’t have the luxury of taking an hour away from the workplace to attend indispensable family commitments. We have to change that dynamic.

And as we work together, we will build a better America! As we work together, we will bring the middle class to thrive again! As we work together, we will make sure that everybody has the ladder of opportunity to climb!

You shouldn’t have to win the boss lottery in order to have a little bit of flexibility at work. Raising and supporting a family isn’t just a financial obligation. What’s important isn’t just being able to put food on the dinner table – we want you to be at the dinner table, too.

It is not possible that it is God‘s will that women are making 77 cents on a dollar.

The Labor Department’s Hall of Honor recognizes men and women – like Cesar Chavez, Helen Keller and the Workers of the Memphis Sanitation Strike – who have made invaluable contributions to the welfare of American workers.

Federal government has been a gateway to the middle class for people of color for generations.

From the new hate crimes law to the repeal of DOMA and ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ to the emerging popular support for marriage equality, we are making progress at breakneck speed. As someone who has dedicated most of my career to civil rights law, I am deeply moved by this sea change and proud to have done my part.

You can’t eat cake and lose weight.

Misclassification means workers are denied not just minimum wage and overtime but other social safety net protections like workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.

If Donald Trump wants to pass comprehensive immigration reform, I will work with Donald Trump.

I’m often accused of hiring people with civil rights experience, and I do plead guilty to that.

We have to bake labor provisions into the core of an agreement. TPP would do that. Under NAFTA, countries had to simply promise to uphold the laws of their own nations.

Frankly, what we need to be looking at is whether this election was rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin.

In terms of intellectual property, so many of the job creators I know are start-ups. In the IP setting, we can meaningfully improve on the status quo, and in so doing, we can help small businesses, large businesses, and those in between.

How do we make sure that rising tides lift all boats and not just the yachts?

The most important family value of all is time with your family.

As I travel around the country, I am inspired by leaders who know that offering paid leave – whether sick time or family leave – isn’t just the right thing to do: it’s essential to building an economy that works for everyone.

Labor Day 2013 is special. This year marks the centennial of the U.S. Department of Labor – 100 years of working for America’s workers.

I’m proud to be Secretary of Labor. But I’m even prouder of two more important titles: dad and husband. I’ve been able to be all three. I want all working people, no matter what their jobs are, to be able to meet their obligations both at work and at home.

Joe Arpaio built a wall. His was a wall of distrust, and when you don’t have the trust of the community, you don’t have anything. He claimed to be a law-and-order sheriff, but he was really lawlessness and disorder.

We’re trying to make sure that financial advisers act like lawyers and doctors. When you go to a lawyer or doctor, they have an obligation to put your best interests first. Financial advisers don’t.

Tampa Electric has used apprenticeships since 1978 to make sure its workforce is the best in the business – trained, prepared, and productive. Apprenticeships improve its bottom line and give the company a competitive advantage.

Progressives believe in making progress, which is why I’m proud to endorse Hillary Clinton, who I know will continue fighting to ensure our children and grandchildren can achieve their highest and best dreams.

Sometimes you have to push the envelope in pursuit of the right thing.

When you cut investments in worker training, you’re cutting investments in the middle class.

As America prepared for war in 1941, discrimination largely shut black Americans out of job opportunities in the growing defense industry.

Protecting the rights of service members was an important part of my work as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

The typical minimum wage earner is a provider and a breadwinner – most likely a woman – responsible for paying bills, running a household and raising children.

Budgets are moral documents. They reflect the values of any government and when you’re compromising clean air, clean water, and lead, you’re making a statement about communities you don’t care about.

Too many jobs don’t pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead.

Responding to a natural disaster is a complex problem.

Donald Trump, you don’t stand for our values.

I believe the passage of a national paid family and medical leave law is not a question of if, but when. But as is so often the case on important public policy issues, we need states and localities to be the incubators of innovation.

The labor movement is our brother‘s keeper! The labor movement is our sister‘s keeper!

I’ve talked to several CEOs – from a recycling company in Indiana, a furniture company in Kentucky, a brewing company in Colorado, and more – who believe paying higher wages is both the right thing to do and part of a successful business model.

Talk about the issues that matter most to people.

Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one.

The Department of Labor’s final conflict of interest rule will ensure that America’s workers and retirees receive retirement advice in their best interest.

Civil rights activists and union activists shared not just common values and objectives but also common enemies.

We are indeed a nation of immigrants. People who choose to come to America have always been one of our greatest sources of national vitality. They keep our economy strong and our communities dynamic. They are some of our greatest patriots.