Karl Marx was a German economist/philosopher who espoused how valuable Labor was for society. Unfortunately his name carries a LOT of baggage mainly due to the 1%ers who find his words dangerous, and they've used endless propaganda to smear him.
So is there any other well know economist whom we can quote with ideas similar to Marx, but without enabling the strawman of something like “Oh, you're a commie Marxist” to deflect the argument.
Otherwise, to show just how valuable labor is, and how any threat to keeping it's cost low is a threat to profits and power, consider this…
Why did so many Empires (Roman, Spanish, Muslim, British, etc) put so much effort into keeping slavery going?
Why did the richest American Southerners .. the Plantation owners… foster a Civil War to protect slavery?
Why did the richest American industrialists do everything to squash labor unions, and still do to this day?
Why did the richest European industrialists support Hitler and Mussolini to squash any union movements?
Why had China become such a world power?
Labor. Or more specifically, the need to keep labor costs as low as possible in order to keep profits and power as high as possible.