Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on Truths Forgotten About the Labor Movement)

“History is a great teacher. Now, everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.”—American civil-rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), address to the AFL-CIO in Bal Harbour, FL, Dec. 11, 1961, in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by James Melvin Washington (1986)

Martin Luther King’s leadership of the civil-rights movement hardly stopped with his successful campaigns against segregation and for voting rights. He recognized that a living wage was just as essential for African-Americans.

Nobody should forget that he reminded his audience at the AFL-CIO and the larger American public that unions, by raising wages, had created a mass market for industry in the postwar era.

His belief in the necessity of unions was so powerful that he was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers when he was assassinated in April 1968.

One person today who has forgotten the “simple truths” that King identified 63 years ago—as well as that he lost his life while advocating for justice for striking workers—is Donald Trump. 

Then again, as a leader who sought to create coalitions for change through non-divisive rhetoric, Dr. King would have been appalled by Trump’s demagogic references these last few weeks to “black jobs.”

Even that doesn’t constitute a truly bizarre, unforced error by the GOP Presidential nominee. Instead, try his endorsement of firing striking workers in his recent X interview with Elon Musk—a mistake all the greater considering that union member votes may be more up for grabs than at any time since Labor Day was declared a federal holiday 140 years ago.

The GOP nominee’s observation unleashed widespread condemnation from union leaders. A typical denunciation— that Trump’s remarks constituted “economic terrorism”—came from Teamster head Sean O’Brien, who had addressed the Republican Convention only the month before.

The electronic Trump-Musk dialogue also prompted the United Auto Workers to file unfair labor practice charges against the GOP presidential nominee and the X impresario, alleging interference with workers who may want to exercise their right to join a union.

Even before the conversation between the tetchy ex-President and the tech billionaire, Trump had compiled a problematic labor-relations record dating back to his days in New York real estate, including a $1.4 million settlement for underpaying undocumented Polish workers who demolished the Bonwit Teller department store to make way for Trump Tower.

Without the Wagner Act of 1935—the so-called “Magna Carta” of organized labor—Trump would never have been called to account for that violation. 

Now, his loose remarks to Musk blatantly undercut another central tenet of this landmark legislation: that “no person shall be denied employment because of membership in or affiliation with a labor union."

That same legislation had previously benefited my father and maternal grandfather.

As Irish immigrants, their entry into the American middle class was eased by the benefits of union membership. When their way of life was threatened, it came via layoffs from bosses every bit as contemptuous (if not crude) as Trump.

If they were alive today, I’m sure they would have scoffed not just at Trump’s remarks but also his larger pretensions to being a working-class hero.

This Labor Day weekend, even with high-profile union victories in the last year involving the United Auto Workers and the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes, it’s easy to forget that the position of most American workers remains tenuous.

But, if this country is serious about addressing income inequality and worker safety—and yes, as Dr. King noted, ensuring an adequate market able to pay for the products of American industry—then it will stop undercutting labor unions.