Public Servitude

To the Editor:

Reuven Blau's Dec. 7 article and the page 11 (unintentionally ironic) subhead, "USA Honors Dr. Martin Luther King," stir memories. I had been in Memphis with Dr. King (I was Southern Director of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union) as he supported the civil and labor rights of a group of public employees who were engaging in an AFSCME-led illegal strike.

In 1983 the United States Government saw fit to declare King's birthday a national holiday. When, in 1985, Victor Gotbaum, AFSCME leader in New York City, sought recognition of that day as a paid holiday, the city's response was, then as now, "Pay for it."

At the time I was at a labor conference in Canada and mentioned this bargaining impasse to some unionists. They were astonished to learn that in the USA a legal holiday is not automatically, by law, a paid holiday. "Otherwise," one labor leader observed, "it's not a holiday - it's a layoff!"

To this day, and in New York State as in Tennessee, a strike by public employees is considered illegal and a mayor may refer to these workers as "thuggish." It's the same in Putin's Russia, which is what led Leo Gerard, president of the Steelworkers' union and chair of the AFL-CIO Legislative Committee, to declare the New York State Taylor Law a Stalinist law. To this day New York City civil servants are treated by their employers as servants, not citizens. Absent the right to strike, the Thirteenth Amendment does not apply to all Americans.

MARTIN MORAND

Editor's note: Mr. Morand is an Emeritus Professor of industrial and labor relations at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.