Now is the Time to Make Workers' Rights a Civil Right

“The two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country are the labor movement and the Negro freedom movement. Together, we can be architects of democracy.”
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1961 AFL-CIO convention

By Richard D. Kahlenberg and Moshe Z. Marvit

As long as conservatives try to paint unions as greedy self-interested institutions — “special interests” just after their slice of the pie — labor law reform is unlikely to spark a romantic association for progressives.

Framing labor as part of the larger civil rights struggle underlines the reality that labor helps lead America’s broad movement for social change, aiding union members and nonmembers alike. While labor is appropriately committed to higher wages and better working conditions for its members, it is also part of a bigger social justice movement that fights for equality across the board, championing stronger health care, education, and minimum wage policies that help all Americans.

In the past, the fact that labor was part of the heroic fight for economic justice was self-evident, as the names John L. Lewis and Norma Rae had broad resonance with the American public. But few Americans are today deeply familiar with the history of the labor movement. And as organized labor shrinks as a proportion of the workforce, fewer and fewer young people have fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, or neighbors who can educate them about the labor movement’s considerable accomplishments in the fight for a fairer society.

By contrast, Americans know well the glorious history and accomplishments of the black freedom and civil rights movement. A 2004 CNN/AARP poll found that 81 percent of Americans rate the civil rights movement as “extremely important” or “very important.” For many progressives, the civil rights era is part of the “golden age” of liberal activism in which individuals come together to fight to rectify long-standing injustices. Not surprisingly, the civil rights movement is routinely invoked when leaders are trying to motivate audiences to act for a particular cause. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both, for example, have called education reform the “civil rights issue of our time.” Writing labor organizing into the Civil Rights Act would help underline the deep historical ties between the civil rights and labor movements as what King called “the two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country.”

Excerpted from “Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice” (New York: The Century Foundation Press, 2012).