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USW Honors Martin Luther King Civil Rights, Workers’ Rights Leader

For Immediate Release                                          January 18, 2008

Pittsburgh, PA -- “We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us.”

That statement by the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights visionary who we commemorate on Monday, could easily have been made a century ago. He delivered it at an AFL-CIO convention in 1961, nearly 100 years after the slaves were freed.

Dr. King supported workers’ rights as he did civil rights because he saw the connection between the two. It’s difficult to seize and secure one’s civil rights while struggling daily for the barest necessities of life.

During the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Dr. King recognized that wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of a few. He supported unions as vehicles to help the many to work together to gain economic justice.

In the past 30 years, the annual income of the vast majority of American has slid downhill, while that of the top 10 percent has risen – even more rapidly after the Bush Administration gave them a big tax break.

This is the kind of economic injustice that Dr. King opposed all his life. It is the kind of injustice that unions like the United Steelworkers continue to struggle against. And as we honor Dr. King on Monday, we thank him for his guidance because we know our work is not done.

Contacts: Barbara White Stack 724-713-2821 bstack@usw.org

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