As the country takes the day to reflect on the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s hard to read his work and not think about how his sentiments relate to the modern world and workplace.
Labor reform and job automation were components of King’s work for change and for racial equality in the US.
Labor and equality. King worked closely with the labor movement, and he felt that a strong, prosperous workforce would lead to progress for all. “The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress,” King said at an AFL-CIO convention in 1965. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.”
At an AFL-CIO convention in 1961, King spoke of the economic inequalities facing Black men, and of the solidarity between the labor and Black liberation movements, saying, “Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”
King was a staunch advocate for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, and gender-based discrimination in hiring and promoting. King referred to it as a “second emancipation.”
And during the final months of his life in 1968, he spoke about how equality should extend to economic opportunities, NPR reported. “We know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”
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Automation. Speculation surrounding AI’s impact on the modern workforce is growing. King similarly warned of the impacts of automation on vulnerable workers. “New economic patterning through automation is dissolving the jobs of workers in some of the nation’s basic industries,” he said during a union speech in April 1961, emphasizing the need for solutions. He continued, saying, “the society that performs miracles with machinery has the capacity to make some miracles for men—if it values men as highly as it values machines.”
The work ahead. In his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, King spoke about the persistent inequalities for Black men, 100 years after the end of slavery. “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity,” he said.
While the majority of Americans believe the US has improved on racial issues since King entered the public stage in the 1950s, there’s more work to do. For instance, the median Black worker still makes 21% less than the median white worker, according to the New York Times. Black men remain less likely to hold management or C-suite positions, and in 2023, Black professionals received fewer promotions than their white peers.
Reverend William Barber, a social justice advocate, called on the country to continue King’s work toward equality last year. “We don’t need museums, but movements. Not commemorations, but consecrations to dedicate our lives to the unfinished business of MLK and so many others who loved justice,” he tweeted.