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labor
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
labor
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
Labor Day
labor union
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
cheap
▪ Process technology moves around the globe to find the cheapest labor and the friendliest markets.
▪ In this context, apprentices offer a cheap source of labor.
▪ They met a decade ago in Zhuhai, a fast-growing southern metropolis whose economy has relied on the cheap migrant labor.
▪ Ultimately, they were assured of a cheap and exploitable labor force through the constant turnover of young, female employees.
▪ He proposes unspecified tariffs on imports from Third-World nations that depend on cheap labor.
▪ The cheap labor was short-lived, however.
▪ Or is it the availability of cheap foreign labor?
hard
▪ The hard labor in shelled pecans had always made her mother call them pure gold.
▪ The mothers regularly gathered for conversation and hard labor in central laundry rooms.
▪ Breathing was hard labor now; his fever steadily mounted.
▪ Then Prospero set Ferdinand to hard labor and made himself invisible so he could observe him.
▪ He had an air of strength, with the look of a man who was never frightened of hard labor.
▪ I think life imprisonment with hard labor is really important.
high
▪ Balancing the two means you sometimes lose an order or live with higher than necessary labor costs.
▪ Suppose the foreign country has a higher capital / labor ratio.
▪ As a result, prod-ucts with higher direct labor costs were allocated proportionately more of the overhead cost.
▪ And that, he added, means higher labor costs.
▪ Employers and business groups contend that a higher minimum wage would saddle them with higher labor costs.
▪ The factor content of its exports consists of a higher capital / labor ratio than the factor content of its imports.
▪ All these things translate into a high demand for labor.
manual
▪ Those who reported they did heavy manual labor at work had a 52 percent reduction in risk.
▪ One effect of this sea change in the way the world works is the diminishing value of manual labor.
▪ Jack, though he had tended bar in his time, was not required to do manual labor.
▪ They know it when their older loved ones die sooner because of having led harsh lives in domestic service or manual labor.
▪ He got manufacturers to streamline processes and develop standard expectations for manual labor.
skilled
▪ In this regard, it seems to be essential to distinguish between the skilled and unskilled labor markets.
▪ Scientific wages have already started to respond to what is effectively a new cheap source of very highly skilled labor.
▪ Boeing blamed late aircraft deliveries, snarled assembly lines and shortages of parts and skilled labor for the loss.
▪ He needed to attract and retain skilled labor.
▪ These reformers were joined by powerful forces in the business community who wanted the schools to help train a skilled labor pool.
unskilled
▪ In this regard, it seems to be essential to distinguish between the skilled and unskilled labor markets.
▪ The result: a flooded unskilled labor market.
▪ First, substitution possibilities are not symmetrical between the skilled and the unskilled labor.
▪ Those empty countries needed both people and unskilled labor.
▪ The union quest to preserve the rights and prerogatives of unskilled labor are doomed to failure.
▪ The demand for unskilled labor is going down; the pool of unskilled labor is growing...
▪ Well-paying jobs for unskilled labor are disappearing at an alarming rate.
■ NOUN
camp
▪ And thousands more were interned in forced labor camps.
▪ Bao Ge, released in June after three years in a labor camp, was recently allowed to have a passport.
▪ In the Soviet Union, in 1965, he was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp.
▪ Runtal lived much of his life in labor camps on private property, but never in Agbayani Village.
▪ Millions of others died in incredibly harsh conditions in hundreds of labor camps.
▪ The first was Greenspun's being shipped to a labor camp with her two siblings.
child
▪ Congress recently acted to deny trade preferences to countries that fail to meet their legal obligations to end such abusive child labor.
▪ Private social welfare organizations have been campaigning for years to end this most blatant exploitation of child labor.
▪ He also proposes to toughen civil and criminal penalties for willful child labor violations.
▪ The Customs Service will receive a stream of tips from child labor groups and will have to check on relatively few sites.
▪ But the countries say worldwide economic competition makes it difficult to eliminate child labor altogether.
▪ Maybe the firms exploited women employees or relied on child labor.
▪ Labor experts and activists say child labor is an outgrowth of profound poverty, entrenched cultural habits and decades of government neglect.
▪ They fought against the prior violence of child labor and starvation wages.
costs
▪ In manufacturing, labor costs have actually fallen.
▪ But try to balance the problems against the drop in your labor costs.
▪ And to remain king, he had to watch labor costs.
▪ Similarly, in one situation, illegal non-capitalist practices -- labor fines -- lower the labor costs of a highly capitalist owner.
▪ Advantages of computerization to the supermarket operator include reduced labor costs, fewer pricing errors, and better inventory control.
▪ The airlines will pay as-yet-unspecified labor costs.
▪ Employees needed to know the wage differential and how that impacted unit labor costs.
dispute
▪ Shi said a trend to watch is growth in collective labor disputes, which occurred6,567 times in 1998 and involved 251,268 workers.
▪ It is said that other Presidents without congressional authority have taken possession of private business enterprises in order to settle labor disputes.
▪ For the moment, union officials are devoting their energies to the labor dispute at Quincy Farms.
force
▪ Even to suggest that efforts he made to expand the labor force by increasing the domestic birth rate would seem slightly artful.
▪ The main competitive advantage of the firm is the relatively low cost of the labor force both for production and design.
▪ Ultimately, they were assured of a cheap and exploitable labor force through the constant turnover of young, female employees.
▪ Parents of caretakers, however, would be penalized substantially relative to parents whose children stay in the labor force full time.
▪ It is estimated that approximately 17 percent of the labor force works less than thirty hours a week.
▪ In addition to job creation, the plan envisioned improving the quality of the labor force through education and training programs.
▪ But overall growth in the labor force will be only about as fast as growth in the general population.
▪ The people who are going to enter the labor force for the next twenty years have already been born.
law
▪ I wish I had talked to this woman, Mother Teresa, before I had gone into labor law.
▪ Social Security and federal labor laws being early examples.
▪ This time the first cause has to do with a new labor law.
▪ The labor law itself is no routine measure.
▪ Trends in labor law are moving towards protection of the ill employee.
▪ So, in 1932, Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Act, which may be the greatest labor law ever passed.
▪ But labor law is not set up this way, and it would be very hard in our circuit, we said.
▪ But weak economic performance, supporters said, is precisely why Kim has pushed so hard to revise the labor law.
lawyer
▪ I am a labor lawyer, and my heart sinks.
▪ To me, a labor lawyer, a beating at a union hall is a political act.
▪ Even a good labor lawyer might not have been much help.
▪ I was surprised to hear this from a labor lawyer.
▪ C., a labor lawyer, has been teaching me about corporate campaigns.
▪ The father of one of the pregnant women was a labor lawyer.
▪ Another labor lawyer, a friend of mine, sent me a copy.
▪ As a young labor lawyer, I used to think I could ignore the Teamsters.
leader
▪ At least two of the labor leaders on hand, however, let loose their rage.
▪ Another group of labor leaders recognized the inevitability of teams.
▪ Try to imagine any labor leader today even getting on cable.
▪ And labor leaders accept the idea.
▪ He was the first big labor leader to back Jimmy Carter for president in 1976.
▪ The labor leaders called for a meeting at Haymarket Square on the evening of May 4, 1885.
▪ His policy is that a labor leader be appointed to every policy-making city board or committee.
▪ And soon the press began to come around as they had not come around a labor leader in years.
market
▪ The only problem is that this runs counter to trends in the labor market.
▪ There were commercial, industrial, and home-economics studies to prepare young people for the labor market.
▪ The labor market could also pose problems.
▪ In this regard, it seems to be essential to distinguish between the skilled and unskilled labor markets.
▪ The result: a flooded unskilled labor market.
▪ To do this, two peculiarities of the labor market must be remembered.
▪ During the next three years, thousands of welfare families will be thrust into this low-income labor market because of welfare reform.
▪ There should be no mistaking where the logic of a totally free, totally integrated world labor market leads.
movement
▪ In short, the attitudes of both the social elite and the labor movement have served to hinder economic growth.
▪ The labor movement can bring some sense of economic justice to working families.
▪ This psychic shift has, of course, been great for company profits and terrible for the labor movement.
▪ Once people become unemployed, even if they were always good union members, they are out of the labor movement.
▪ With foresight, the whole labor movement today could have been like the Machinists and the Pilots.
▪ They for whom the protests of the labor movement had been so important.
▪ Had this really once been a labor movement?
pool
▪ Employers who use immigrant workers for high-tech jobs and others may yet face restrictions on that labor pool.
▪ These reformers were joined by powerful forces in the business community who wanted the schools to help train a skilled labor pool.
▪ It is the vast labor pool that global capitalism has tapped into that is the new leviathan.
productivity
▪ We can also see that labor productivity increased slightly more than land productivity until 1992, then the relationship was reversed.
▪ In the mid-1980s, labor productivity in the white-collar sector was hardly growing at all.
▪ Thus, agricultural production can increase as a result of colonization, population growth and improvements in land and labor productivity.
▪ A dramatically lower savings rate, low growth rates in investment and labor productivity, and stagnating wages are a direct result.
▪ I expect that only land and labor productivity will be influenced by land reform.
secretary
▪ Welfare commissioners, labor secretaries, commerce department staffers-all can shift resources into areas of higher productivity and yield.
▪ He spent 12 years teaching at Harvard before being named labor secretary in 1993.
shortage
▪ There was concern about creating a labor shortage that would have imperiled the war effort.
▪ Industries with critical labor shortages launched youth apprenticeships as a way to recruit skilled employees.
▪ Despite some scattered labor shortages, however, the taut job market has yet to spark significant inflation pressures.
▪ Moreover, Hilti could see itself plagued by labor shortages far into the future.
▪ That was certainly the case in Wisconsin, where labor shortages propelled the printing industry into a new relationship with the schools.
▪ Wages only rise if there are labor shortages.
▪ Unemployment is so low that spot labor shortages are cropping up around the country.
▪ Wages go up when there are labor shortages, not when there are labor surpluses.
union
▪ Some groups, such as the farmers and the labor unions, now gained a greater share in power and its benefits.
▪ Add to this the fact that in every developed country today, the strongest labor unions are government employees.
▪ But Selikoff persisted in his campaign against asbestos, aided and abetted by labor unions and environmental groups.
▪ Its members include major airlines, automakers, labor unions, medical societies, consumer groups and some insurance companies.
▪ Those employees were entitled to health and welfare benefits under a labor contract between Santa Fe and the labor union.
▪ No one would trust a documentary series about labor unions paid for entirely by union funds.
▪ The flight attendants meeting in Sydney this morning have authorized their labor union to take further action.
▪ The post-job world is also going to force labor unions to redefine what they are and what they do.
■ VERB
do
▪ Those who reported they did heavy manual labor at work had a 52 percent reduction in risk.
▪ This time the first cause has to do with a new labor law.
▪ Jack, though he had tended bar in his time, was not required to do manual labor.
▪ But did those nasty labor activists have to publicly accuse her of exploiting children to help children?
increase
▪ For example, improved pregnancy outcome that reduces infant mortality will increase productivity in the labor force in 16 to 25 years.
▪ Part of Malthus's pessimism stemmed from the conviction that when population increased the price of labor would drop.
organize
▪ Rejection of fast-track by Congress would be a stunning victory for organized labor and environmentalists, who vigorously opposed the legislation.
▪ And this was the flagship of organized labor.
▪ Meanwhile, organized labor and the thousands of new patronage jobs in the federal bureaucracy gave the president powerful political leverage.
▪ If organized labor is going to revive, the experts agree this is the year it must wake up and start stretching.
▪ And that is exactly what it was-a show of solidarity between the Clinton administration and organized labor.
▪ There is a lot of downtime in organized labor, waiting for meetings to start.
▪ The secret world of organized labor.
▪ And now organized labor began to lumber.
pay
▪ The airlines will pay as-yet-unspecified labor costs.
▪ Even adults who are not in the paid labor force may well be working hard.
▪ In 1987, more than half of mothers of chil-dren under five were in the paid labor force.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Much of Harkin's support comes from organized labor.
▪ The repairs cost $25 for parts and $60 for labor.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Labor

Labor \La"bor\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Labored; p. pr. & vb. n. Laboring.] [OE. labouren, F. labourer, L. laborare. See Labor, n.] [Written also labour.]

  1. To exert muscular strength; to exert one's strength with painful effort, particularly in servile occupations; to work; to toil.

    Adam, well may we labor still to dress This garden.
    --Milton.

  2. To exert one's powers of mind in the prosecution of any design; to strive; to take pains.

  3. To be oppressed with difficulties or disease; to do one's work under conditions which make it especially hard, wearisome; to move slowly, as against opposition, or under a burden; to be burdened; -- often with under, and formerly with of.

    The stone that labors up the hill.
    --Granville.

    The line too labors, and the words move slow.
    --Pope.

    To cure the disorder under which he labored.
    --Sir W. Scott.

    Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
    --Matt. xi. 28

  4. To be in travail; to suffer the pangs of childbirth; to be in labor.

  5. (Naut.) To pitch or roll heavily, as a ship in a turbulent sea.
    --Totten.

Labor

Labor \La"bor\ (l[=a]"b[~e]r), n. [OE. labour, OF. labour, laber, labur, F. labeur, L. labor; cf. Gr. lamba`nein to take, Skr. labh to get, seize.] [Written also labour.]

  1. Physical toil or bodily exertion, especially when fatiguing, irksome, or unavoidable, in distinction from sportive exercise; hard, muscular effort directed to some useful end, as agriculture, manufactures, and like; servile toil; exertion; work.

    God hath set Labor and rest, as day and night, to men Successive.
    --Milton.

  2. Intellectual exertion; mental effort; as, the labor of compiling a history.

  3. That which requires hard work for its accomplishment; that which demands effort.

    Being a labor of so great a difficulty, the exact performance thereof we may rather wish than look for.
    --Hooker.

  4. Travail; the pangs and efforts of childbirth.

    The queen's in labor, They say, in great extremity; and feared She'll with the labor end.
    --Shak.

  5. Any pang or distress.
    --Shak.

  6. (Naut.) The pitching or tossing of a vessel which results in the straining of timbers and rigging.

  7. [Sp.] A measure of land in Mexico and Texas, equivalent to an area of 1771/7 acres.
    --Bartlett.

  8. (Mining.) A stope or set of stopes. [Sp. Amer.]

    Syn: Work; toil; drudgery; task; exertion; effort; industry; painstaking. See Toll.

Labor

Labor \La"bor\, v. t. [F. labourer, L. laborare.]

  1. To work at; to work; to till; to cultivate by toil.

    The most excellent lands are lying fallow, or only labored by children.
    --W. Tooke.

  2. To form or fabricate with toil, exertion, or care. ``To labor arms for Troy.''
    --Dryden.

  3. To prosecute, or perfect, with effort; to urge strenuously; as, to labor a point or argument.

  4. To belabor; to beat. [Obs.]
    --Dryden.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
labor

c.1300, "a task, a project;" later "exertion of the body; trouble, difficulty, hardship" (late 14c.), from Old French labor "labor, toil, work, exertion, task" (12c., Modern French labeur), from Latin laborem (nominative labor) "labor, toil, exertion; hardship, pain, fatigue; a work, a product of labor," of uncertain origin, perhaps originally from the notion of "tottering under a burden," and related to labere "to totter."\n

\nMeaning "body of laborers considered as a class" (usually contrasted to capitalists) is from 1839. Sense of "physical exertions of childbirth" is 1590s, earlier labour of birthe (early 15c.), a sense also found in Old French, and compare French en travail "in (childbirth) suffering" (see travail). Labor Day first marked 1882 in New York City.

labor

late 14c., "perform manual or physical work; work hard; keep busy; take pains, strive, endeavor" (also "copulate"), from Old French laborer "work, toil; struggle, have difficulty," from Latin laborare, from labor (see labor (n.)). The verb in modern French, Spanish, Portuguese means "to plow;" the wider sense being taken by the equivalent of English travail. Sense of "to endure pain, suffer" is early 15c., especially in phrase labor of child. Related: Labored; laboring.

Wiktionary
labor

n. (context Australia informal English) The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian%20Labor%20Party.

Related phrases:
WordNet
labor

  1. v. strive and make an effort to reach a goal; "She tugged for years to make a decent living"; "We have to push a little to make the deadline!"; "She is driving away at her doctoral thesis" [syn: tug, labour, push, drive]

  2. work hard; "She was digging away at her math homework"; "Lexicographers drudge all day long" [syn: labour, toil, fag, travail, grind, drudge, dig, moil]

  3. undergo the efforts of childbirth [syn: labour]

labor

  1. n. productive work (especially physical work done for wages); "his labor did not require a great deal of skill" [syn: labour, toil]

  2. a social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages; "there is a shortage of skilled labor in this field" [syn: labour, working class, proletariat]

  3. concluding state of pregnancy; from the onset of labor to the birth of a child; "she was in labor for six hours" [syn: parturiency, labour, confinement, lying-in, travail, childbed]

  4. an organized attempt by workers to improve their status by united action especially via labor unions (especially the leaders of this movement) [syn: labor movement, trade union movement]

  5. a political party formed in Great Britain in 1900; characterized by the promotion of labor's interests and the socialization of key industries [syn: Labour Party, Labour, Labor Party]

  6. the federal department responsible for promoting the working conditions of wage earners in the United States; created in 1913 [syn: Department of Labor, Labor Department, DoL]

  7. any piece of work that is undertaken or attempted; "he prepared for great undertakings" [syn: undertaking, project, task]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Labor (album)

Labor is the second album from Brooklyn electropop band MEN. It was self-released on October 22, 2013, with full album streaming made available on Bandcamp as well as the New York Times interactive website.

The album takes a subtler, more introspective approach than the band's overtly activist 2011 debut full-length, Talk About Body, although the single "Let Them Out Or Let Me In" supporting the Free Pussy Riot movement is included. After a shuffling of the band’s lineup since their debut, Samson has said she focused more on elements of transition and change for this self-released second album. By turning inward, Labor gives JD Samson & MEN greater accessibility. The reality that activist music can only go so far, this album serves to avoid restrictive genre terminology assigned to the band such as “ LGBT music”.

In addition to the activist single "Let Them Out Or Let Me In", the album also contains previously released songs: all three tracks from Next EP, released in February 2012.

The band teamed up with French producer Yuksek on the single "All The Way Thru".

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "labor".

In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil.

In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage, and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers, except the legislature, boldly advocated, with labored argument to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil.

The proposed acquiescence of the National Executive in any reasonable temporary State arrangement for the freed people is made with the view of possibly modifying the confusion and destitution which must at best attend all classes by a total revolution of labor throughout whole States.

The direct actionists are a warning to the Socialist Party that its tactics and its program are not adequate to domesticating the deepest unrest of labor.

The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he labored to cultivate and adorn, as the perpetual inheritance of his family.

This is the level of culture at which Sherman Anti-Trust acts are passed, brothels are raided, and labor agitators are thrown into jail.

And you wonder that the little nihilist groups and labor organizations and associations of agnostics, as you call them, meeting to study political economy and philosophy, say that the existing state of things has got to be overturned violently, if those who have the power and the money continue indifferent.

But in the South, where Negro labor is plenty and agriculture is the chief occupation, the Negro will always have a practical monopoly, and his opportunities in all the trades in the North, as well as in the South, will increase in proportion as he becomes an educated, thrifty, law-abiding land-owner.

He does four-fifths of the agricultural labor of the South and thereby adds four-fifths to the wealth of the South derived from agriculture, the leading Southern industry.

There would be less labor incorporated into an acre of grain, and the agriculturist would be therefore obliged to exchange it for a less labor incorporated into some other article.

I hoped nothing would occur to retard the progress of the work, and that the present arrangement might continue without changes of any kind, because I knew that when you were dictating your mind was completely absorbed by your mental labors, and that any alteration in your hours of work, or the necessity of explaining your methods to a new amanuensis, annoyed and impeded you.

The labor unions deserve to be favored, because they are the most effective machinery which has as yet been forged for the economic and social amelioration of the laboring class.

Department of Justice arising out of strikes, subversive activities in connection with labor disputes, or labor disturbances of any kind in industrial establishments which have naval contracts, either as prime contractors or subcontractors.

It was also the duty of the armarian, under the orders of his superior, to provide the transcribers of manuscripts with the writings which they were to copy, as well as all the materials necessary for their labors, to make bargains as to payment, and to superintend the work during their progress.

He continued his bloody labors on various new projects, too numerous to mention, until May 1944, when he and his wife were arrested by the S.