labor for

labor for (someone or something)

1. To work very hard or diligently on someone or something else's behalf. We have nearly 30 employees laboring for us at this company, and any decision we make will affect all of them as well! I labored for her political campaign for months, but the moment it was over I was brushed aside without so much as a fare thee well.
2. To work very hard or diligently in order to accomplish, achieve, or obtain something All of our volunteers labor for the betterment of people in need. The huge farming operation, which supplies states across the country, has been accused of forcing migrant workers to labor for only a few dollars an hour, far short of the national minimum wage.
See also: labor
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

labor for someone or something

to work on behalf of someone or something. I labored for them all day, and they didn't even thank me. I have labored for this cause for many years.
See also: labor

labor for something

to work in order to get something, such as money. I was laboring for a pittance, so I decided to get another job. I labor for the love of it.
See also: labor
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • labor for (someone or something)
  • labored
  • labour
  • labor at
  • labor at (something)
  • labor away (at something)
  • empathize
  • empathize with
  • empathize with (someone or something)
  • hard at (something)
References in periodicals archive
While the firm-determined product price exceeds marginal cost at the profit-maximizing quantity of output for a ppm, marginal revenue will equal marginal cost there; similarly, although the firm-determined wage is less than marginal revenue product at the profit-maximizing amount of labor for a rpm, marginal labor cost will equal marginal revenue product there.
Product and resource markets: points of symmetry
In many countries, children work long hours at backbreaking labor for pennies a day.
LOST CHILDHOODS
Spurred by a book by Henri Godin and Yves David, two Catholic Action chaplains, a movement began to grow around Loew and others in the 1940s for priests who would identify completely with workers and manually labor for a living.
Priests at work
In addition, it allows businesses greater freedom to lay off workers, increase working hours, and substitute labor for striking workers.
Korea's labor laments
Many first-time mothers labor for more than 12 hours.
Birthing trauma linked to diminished IQ
She and her co-workers studied 204 women: 44 women attempting vaginal birth after previously delivering only by cesarean section; 24 women attempting vaginal delivery who had previously given birth first vaginally and later by cesarean; 68 women in labor for the first time and 68 women who had previously given birth vaginally.
Cesarean predisposes to long labor later
We might think of this figure as representing the "natural" level of labor for children thirteen and under, since employment for children was abundant and varied in the Philadelphia economy.
Learning and earning: schooling, juvenile employment, and the early life course in late nineteenth-century New Haven
Because the family provided the labor supply for the farm, the work of men and women, girls and boys had to be coordinated and organized to complete the labor for the entire farm.
Gender and the family labor system: defining work in the rural Midwest