St. Petersburg Times: Right to a decent job is a principal civil right

[marmar]

Right to a decent job is a principal civil right
By Robyn E. Blumner, Times Columnist

In Print: Sunday, April 5, 2009


“I Am a Man" was the slogan of 1,300 striking black sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968. Their grievances were many, but chief among them was that their wages were so meager they lived below the poverty line.

On April 4, 41 years ago last evening, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. He was in town to help the strikers gain recognition of their union, and his epic "I've been to the mountaintop" speech was a labor rally.

Dr. King is remembered as America's greatest civil rights leader, but the man was a towering labor leader as well. He clearly connected the dots between the immorality of racial inequality and the economic injustices inflicted on working men and women of all colors. It was the same struggle: to demand through collective action one's individual worth and dignity.

One of the great labor speeches in American history is King's 1961 address to the AFL-CIO. In it King reflected on the grand work of the labor movement. He said that in response to the "organized misery" of sweatshops and the notion that capital may "act without restraints and without conscience," the worker unionized and by doing so had "constructed the means by which a fairer sharing of the fruits of his toil had to be given to him."

How sad that in the intervening years King's message to workers has been lost. Worker solidarity has given way to an every-man-for-himself ethic that has helped to strip labor of the influence it once had. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/article989482.ece

[Deja Q]

1. Agreed. Thank you MUCH for posting.

K&R

[gratuitous]

2. But, but, but . . .

If we start paying decent wages, how will we overpay do-nothing CEOs and other executives? Can we expect them to scrape by on a mere $10 million a year while they don't know the first thing about how their businesses operate? Where is the compassion for the overpaid?

[Warpy]

3. Working ANY job, even sweeping floors or pushing fast food

should allow a worker to live above the poverty line, have access to health care when s/he gets sick, and be able to save a little for a rainy day.

ALL jobs should be GOOD jobs. If a job is worth doing, it's worth adequate pay.