Fifty years ago today, on April 3, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his last public speech, which continues to haunt Americans today with its ringing tones of courage in the face of a possible assassination, which in fact occurred the next day.
King gave that speech in Memphis, Tenn. He was in Memphis to support striking unionized government sanitation.
That fact — and the overall evolution of King’s message to include a full-throated embrace of union rights and opposition to the Vietnam War — has often been left out of the popular discussion of his legacy as American culture watered down his message and transformed him in death from a public enemy to a canonized non-threatening saint.
That seems to have changed this week in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of his assassination. Numerous media outlets have focused on that Memphis strike and King’s expansion of the civil rights struggle into a “poor people’s campaign.”
Local union leaders Larry Dorman and Rick Melita have a take on why: The plight of government workers like those who struck in Memphis is again front and center in public life, as efforts to weaken public-sector unions have gained steam. Along with a backlash.
That backlash includes rallies against an expected upcoming Supreme Court decision overturning state laws requiring government workers to pay dues to unions that represent them to cover the costs of bargaining their contracts.
Dorman and Melita helped organized a recent protest at New Haven City Hall against the lawsuit filed in that case, in their capacity as union officials: Melita is state director for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents state and private-sector workers; Dorman is communications coordinator for AFSCME Council 4, which represents 35,000 people in Connecticut, including state and local government social workers, child abuse investigators, paraprofessionals, library workers, cops, and plow drivers. The Memphis sanitation workers on strike in 1968 belonged to AFSCME, as well. (Click here to read a full story about that demonstration and the Supreme Court case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.)
Paul Bass Photo
Alder and union member Kim Edwards addresses Feb, 17 City Hall rally against Janus plaintiffs.
On a 50th anniversary MLK episode of “Dateline New Haven,” Dorman read aloud a 1961 quotation from King about “right to work” laws similar to the plaintiffs’ position in Janus: “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans like ‘right to work.’ …Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer, and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped.”
The backlash also includes walkouts by public-school teachers in right-to-work red states like Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.
“He’s almost been canonized. He’s a secular saint. Everybody’s appropriating a bit of his message to fit their own ideologies. You even hear Republicans saying, ‘He’d be a Republican if he were alive today,’ which I highly doubt.
“His original message was one of economic justice and economic freedom. We’re seeing struggles all over the country for poor people, for low-wage workers, against economic injustice. So his message is as resonant today as it was 50 years ago.”
In Connecticut Melita and Dorman argued that the campaign King led at the time of his death would translate into support for a number of fights at the state Capitol, including efforts to:
• Raise the hourly minimum wage to $15.
• Pass a bill to force large low-wage employers like Walmart to cover state costs for their workers’ Medicaid and food stamp costs.
• Stop the recommendations of a state-appointed “fiscal stability” commission — comprised of corporate CEOs but no representatives of labor — to eliminate state workers’ health care and pension collective bargaining rights and eliminate the estate tax.
• Raise the marginal tax rate on annual income above $500,000 or $1 million from 6.99 percent to 7.5 percent and close the federal “carried interest” loophole that has hedge fund billionaires paying lower rates on their incomes than teachers or custodians do.
“We need to ask our wealthy citizens and largest corporations to pay their fair share,” Dorman argued.
That last point puts labor on the other side of both Republicans and many Democrats at the state Capitol, who argue that the state cannot rely on new tax revenue to tackle its deep fiscal woes because, in their view, the wealthiest taxpayers would simply leave the state. Dorman responded that the number of billionaires has grown in Connecticut in recent years despite the publicized departure of a handful of financial industry executives.
Meanwhile, New Haven’s Harp administration, facing expected cutbacks or flat-lining of state aid, is seeking $3.6 million in labor concessions, even with an 11 percent tax increase, in its proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
AFSCME’s Local 3144 represents the largest group of city workers, including supervisors. Dorman said he “can’t predict” yet how those concession talks will play out.
“We’re well aware that New Haven is facing financial challenges. New Haven’s financial urgencies are a reflection of Connecticut’s failure to tax wealthy people and corporations fairly,” Dorman said.
He said the local union’s relationship with the Harp administration has improved since the election of a new president, noting that the two sides have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract after years of impasse. But even with a “constructive” relationship, “there are always going to be differences,” he noted. “We’re nvever going to be completely on the same page as an employer.”
Click on the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below to hear the full conversation with Rick Melita and Larry Dorman on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
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