Workers Fight for MLK Day Off
One multinational company is using Martin Luther King Day to issue a slap in the face to its union, undermining the very legacy of the civil rights leader.
Louisiana-based telecommunications giant Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink) announced to its staff October 23 that it would be newly establishing a company holiday on MLK Day—but for non-union workers only.
The hypocrisy of leaving out 10,000 union workers on MLK Day was not well received by Anna Robbs, an African-American employee and union steward.
“How dare they?” she recalled thinking. “I just couldn’t wrap my head around how they could feel that there was diversity and inclusion and belonging when they were excluding the very people that Martin Luther King stood up for in terms of labor rights and worker rights.”
Robbs is also an executive board member of Communications Workers (CWA) Local 7777. With the help of her union, she decided to commemorate King’s legacy the right way—by fighting back against an unscrupulous corporation.
“Let’s go and get into some more good trouble,” she said.
REBUFFED TILL 2023
At Robbs’s prompting, CWA contacted CEO Jeff Storey and requested that unionized Lumen workers be granted the holiday, too. The company refused, telling the union that the holiday would have to be bargained in the next contract in 2023.
CWA then set up a petition that got 1,500 signatures.
Anthony Scorzo, a white broadband technician and the local’s vice president, has been organizing members around the issue through worksite visits and one-on-one meetings to collect petition signatures.
“The members understand what Dr. King meant to worker rights,” he said. “It’s been an assault on the union. They’re not surprised by it; they’re willing to fight.”