Labour Work Company Hard Manual Costs Workers Withdraw

• manual labour (= work using your hands)
• the price will include the labour and materials.
• the company wants to keep down labour costs.
• the workers voted to withdraw their labour (= to stop work as a means of protest).

labour

1. work, especially physical work
• see also child labour
  https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/child-labour
• manual labour (= work using your hands)
• The price will include the labour and materials.
• The company wants to keep down labour costs.
• The workers voted to withdraw their labour (= to stop work as a means of protest).
• He was sentenced to two years in a labour camp (= a type of prison where people have to do hard physical work).
2. a task or period of work
• He was so exhausted from the day's labours that he went straight to bed.
• People look forward to enjoying the fruits of their labours during retirement.
3. the people who work or are available for work in a country or company
• a shortage of labour
• Employers are using immigrants as cheap labour.
• Repairs involve skilled labour, which can be expensive.
• good labour relations (= the relationship between workers and employers)
4. the period of time or the process of giving birth to a baby
• Jane was in labour for ten hours.
• She went into labour early.
• labour pains
• It was a difficult labour.
• Older women tend to have more difficult labours.
5. the British Labour Party
• He always votes Labour.
• Labour was/were in power for many years.
6. a hard task that you do because you want to, not because it is necessary
• Writing the book was a labour of love.

Extra Examples

• He was sentenced to four years hard labour for his crime.
• It is now thought that the Pyramids were not built using slave labour.
• It is thought that Stonehenge was built using slave labour.
• Labour was induced when the baby was ten days overdue.
• She was in labour for ten hours.
• She went into labour two weeks early.
• The baby was born after a long labour.
• The miners are threatening to withdraw their labour.
• an increasingly competitive labour market
• tensions between the labour movement and government
• the size of the labour force
• women at risk of preterm labour
• He was sentenced to two years in a labour camp.
• The company wants to keep down labour costs.
• These women were generally accustomed to hard manual labour.

Word Origin

• Middle English: from Old French labour (noun), labourer (verb), both from Latin labor ‘toil, trouble’.