Martin Luther King, Jr. on WORKER JUSTICE AND BLACK LIBERATION

Our needs are identical with labor's needs:  decent wages, fair
working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare
measure, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their
children and respect in the community.
That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight
laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter
is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets
from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.
- AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living
will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians
or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full
realization the American dream's a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of
equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed;
a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to
give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that
the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character;
a dream of a nation where all resources are held not for ourselves alone,
but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a
country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human
personality. That is the dream.

- AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961

As I have said many times, and believe with all my heart, the
coalition that can have the greatest impact in the struggle for human dignity
here in America is that of the Negro and the forces of labor, because their
fortunes are so closely intertwined.
- Letter to Amalgamated Laundry Workers, January 1962

It is in this area [politics] of American life that labor and the
Negro have identical interests. Labor has grave problems today of
employment, shorter hours, old age security, housing and retraining against the impact of
>automation. The Congress and the Administration are almost as
indifferent to labor's program as they are toward that of the Negro
- UAW District 65 Convention, September 1962

In the days to come organized labor will increase its importance in
the destinies of Negroes. Automation is imperceptibly but inexorably
producing dislocations, skimming off unskilled labor from the industrial force.
The displaced are flowing into proliferating service occupations. These
enterprises are traditionally unorganized and provide low wage scales with longer
hours. The Negroes pressed into these services need union protection, and the
union movement needs their membership to maintain its relative strength in
the whole society.
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? 1967

When there is massive unemployment in the black community, it is
called a social problem. But when there is massive unemployment in the white
community, it is called a Depression. We look around every day and we
see thousands and millions of people making inadequate wages. Not only do they work
in our hospitals, they work in our hotels, they work in our laundries, they
work in domestic service, they find themselves underemployed. You see, no
labor is really menial unless you're not getting adequate wages. People are
always talking about menial labor. But if you're getting a good (wage) as I
know that through some unions they've brought it up, that isn't menial labor.
What makes it menial is the income, the wages.
- Local 1199 Salute to Freedom, March 1968

You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor.
So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not
in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs.
But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity
and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.
AFSCME Memphis Sanitation Strike, April 3, 1968
for more info, www.aflcio.org/mlk/history.htm