We Are One: Remembering King’s Struggle for Labor Rights

http://www.hnn.us/articles/138071.html

4-04-11

By Michael Honey

Michael Honey is editor of King’s labor speeches, “All Labor Has Dignity” (Beacon) and author of“Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike: Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign” (Norton).

“It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. And I need not remind you this is our plight as a people all over America.” – Martin Luther King in Memphis, March 18, 1968



April 4 marks forty-three years since an assassin killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis. That date has special meaning this year.

“We Are One” events all over the U.S. are fighting for collective bargaining rights, and more broadly, a reversal of the current priorities and direction of events. The connection of today’s union rights battle to King’s legacy is clear. The strike of Memphis sanitation workers revolved around Mayor Henry Loeb’s refusal to grant collective bargaining rights and union dues collection.

These are the same rights that Governor Scott Walker just took away from public employees in Wisconsin. Like Loeb, he knows this is a good way to kill a union. Who would choose to belong to and pay dues to a union that cannot represent them at the bargaining table?

FULL story at link.

Thank you Steve.
K&R

You educate me about many things , lighting a fire in me.