Byron York‘s latest Washington Examiner article explains that national union leaders are trying to link their political priority list to the civil rights movement.

The AFL-CIO is advising member unions to come up with activities to stress ties between big labor and the civil rights movement. AFL-CIO planners suggest that local labor leaders team up with churches to make workers’ rights a theme at worship services. Union bosses also advise asking churches “to consider organizing candlelight vigils, which could include the reading of Dr. King’s ‘I’ve Been To The Mountaintop’ speech,” which King delivered the night before he was killed.

But was King fighting for the things that Trumka and his union forces are fighting for today? Is, say, the “right” for well-paid, unionized public employees to enjoy a health plan that includes coverage for Viagra —- a cause for which Milwaukee teachers waged a protracted court battle — the equivalent of King’s work in Memphis, much less his efforts for the right to vote and access to public accommodations?

“It is delusion, bordering on abomination, to try to equate what Martin Luther King was doing in Memphis to public workers getting Cadillac benefits for which they contribute very little, or nothing, at taxpayers’ expense,” says Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights who has also served on the National Labor Relations Board. “The sanitation workers in Memphis were receiving wages that were so significantly below that which are enjoyed by middle-class teachers in Madison that to try to draw that comparison is offensive. Truly offensive.”