Employee Free Choice Builds on Legacy of MLK, Civil Rights Leaders Say

The Employee Free Choice Act builds on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights pioneers and has the strongest possible support from those still fighting for justice today, national civil rights leaders said Thursday.

"The Employee Free Choice Act has been largely written about as a labor bill but those of us in the civil rights community know it is so much more -- workers' rights are civil rights and that the right to organize is a civil and human rights issue of the first magnitude," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which hosted a telephone news conference Thursday.

The call was held two days before the 41st anniversary of the death of King, who was assassinated April 4, 1968, while he was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers.

"He was fighting for working people and poor people when he was killed," said Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP. Today, he said, King's fight would be for Employee Free Choice.

Jealous said the bill is critical to the economy as a whole. "When we know that working people are spending every dollar they bring home and then some, more money in the pockets of working people is good for the entire country," he said. "We are throwing in our full support and we have asked (NAACP) members across the country to weigh in with their representatives. We feel confident that as the full depth of support for the Employee Free Choice Act becomes known, we will see it passed."

Henderson said statistics prove that African Americans who are union members are doing far better economically than those without unions.

"The fact is African American union members earn 28 percent more than their nonunion counterparts. The fact is African American union members are about 16 percent more likely to have health insurance than nonunion workers. And the fact is African American union members are about 19 percent more likely to have a pension than nonunion workers," Henderson said. "As A. Philip Randolph used to say, the two tickets for full equality for African Americans have been the voter registration card and the union card."