Why Labor Rights are Civil Rights

As the rhetoric heats up against public employee unions, and with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday upon us, I thought it appropriate to re-post this essay from my last blog. Dr. King was committed to labor rights, literally until his dying day. The Story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s last days fighting for sanitation workers can be found HERE.

My essay on the relationship between minority rights and labor rights, originally posted on August 6, 2009:

When black leader A. Philip Randolph began his career as a civil rights and union activist in the early part of the 20th Century, mostly-white unions usually fought against allowing African Americans to be members of their bargaining units. Just as white workers feared management would take advantage of them as individual employees, they also feared black workers would steal their jobs. And to a certain extent, they were right -- striking workers were sometimes replaced by black "scabs" to add racist insult to injury by management. Historically, management was able to play upon racist fears and blacks' low economic status to divide and conquer the workforce.

But Randolph was a visionary. When he helped unionize the mostly black railway porters of the Pullman Company in 1925, he understood that the company was taking advantage of racism and the economic condition of Black America to create a public image of subservient black men eager to please their white customers. He also understood that white unions and black unions would ultimately be fighting for the same goal: fair wages and tolerable working conditions accompanied by dignity and respect. The struggle for dignity and respect is at the heart of the black civil rights movement, and because they are shared goals of feminists, other minority activists and organized labor, all of these movements are rightly included in the larger struggle for civil rights.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this as well. As he said in a speech to the AFL-CIO's constitutional convention in 1961:

"Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community....The duality of interests of labor and Negroes makes any crisis which lacerates you a crisis from which we bleed."

It was not long after this that A. Philip Randolph joined with leaders from communities of many colors and faiths to organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King made his now-legendary "I Have a Dream" speech. Randolph and King were at the crossroads of civil rights, and they understood that good jobs with fair wages and working conditions were at the heart of the civil rights they sought.

Today, organized labor continues to work side by side with minority groups like the NAACP to ensure dignity and respect for all people, especially those marginalized by racial and economic circumstance. Among the issues affecting laborers and minorities alike are the need for affordable health care for all Americans, the protection of American jobs from encroachment by cheap labor overseas, balance of work and family life, security for the aged, and education for all. Though even many politically liberal observers in the educated middle and upper middle classes may not realize it, organized labor is at the heart of civil rights, perhaps now more than ever. That's because now more than ever, the values of dignity and respect at work are spilling over to inform our values about how we treat one another as human beings -- and how we treat each other as human beings falls within the very definition of civil rights.