King's legacy: workers' rights (Leader fought anti-union efforts)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/305206/kings-legacy-workers-rights?CSAuthResp=1326726249%3Aeeluou2bh9sv018dgui3pbhrb2%3ACSUserId|CSGroupId%3Aapproved%3A878EA192DAB7571DF2DB31869DBFD8B3&CSUserId=94&CSGroupId=1

By Arnie Alpert / For the Monitor
January 16, 2012


At a time when workers are struggling to find decent jobs and local legislators are debating whether to strip public sector workers of their rights to form unions, we would do well to consider that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life standing up for better jobs and workers' rights. As was entirely consistent with his stand for peace and justice, he roundly condemned "right-to-work" laws like those now being pushed in New Hampshire.

Now branded a "civil rights leader," King always tied the black freedom agenda to economics. At the 1963 March on Washington, formally known as the "March for Jobs and Freedom," King explained that 100 years after slavery had been abolished, "the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."

Throughout his 13-year public career, from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Poor Peoples Campaign and the Memphis sanitation workers strike, King "consistently aligned himself with ordinary working people, supporting their demands for workplace rights and economic justice," writes historian Michael Honey in the introduction to a new collection of King speeches.

For a timely example, King spoke out consistently against "right-to-work" laws like the one adopted in last year's legislative session and vetoed by Gov. John Lynch. "Right-to-work "provides no 'rights' and no 'works,' King said. "Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining."

Last week, the New Hampshire House approved HB 383, a version of "right to work" limited to state employees, by a vote of 212-128. A similar bill is up for a hearing this week.

FULL 2 page article at link.