To make the point, the AFL-CIO is planning a series of nationwide events on April 4, the 43rd anniversary of the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated after speaking in Memphis, Tenn., on behalf of striking black garbage collectors. The message: King’s cause, and that of angry schoolteachers in Madison, are one.

By Byron York at Washington Examiner

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Throughout, the AFL-CIO is asking local leaders to tie the Wisconsin issue to the King assassination and civil rights.

The AFL-CIO is advising member unions to come up with activities to stress ties between big labor and the civil rights movement. AFL-CIO planners suggest that local labor leaders team up with churches to make workers’ rights a theme at worship services.

But was King fighting for the things that Trumka and his union forces are fighting for today? Is, say, the “right” for well-paid, unionized public employees to enjoy a health plan that includes coverage for Viagra —- a cause for which Milwaukee teachers waged a protracted court battle — the equivalent of King’s work in Memphis, much less his efforts for the right to vote and access to public accommodations?

“It is delusion, bordering on abomination, to try to equate what Martin Luther King was doing in Memphis to public workers getting Cadillac benefits for which they contribute very little, or nothing, at taxpayers’ expense,” says Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights who has also served on the National Labor Relations Board. “The sanitation workers in Memphis were receiving wages that were so significantly below that which are enjoyed by middle-class teachers in Madison that to try to draw that comparison is offensive. Truly offensive.”

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