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.
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