The comparison the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is making: MLK Jr. was protesting black workers being paid less than whites, in their eyes this is the same as union goons in Wisconsin protesting to preserve making more than their private sector counterparts (plus absurd benefits packages).

Via Jim Geraghty:

The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees offers a video explicitly comparing protesters supporting public-sector unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida to Martin Luther King Jr.

In the AFSCME video, King declares, “we are tired of working full-time jobs for part-time income.” Depending on your perspective, the comparison of the conditions that King denounced in Memphis in 1968 to the condition of unionized state and local governments today is either appalling or laughable. There’s been much dispute as to whether public-sector salaries and benefits in these states are comparable to private-sector ones or whether state and local workers are wildly overpaid (in addition to being largely unaffected by this grueling multi-year recession). But without the slightest sense of their own self-aggrandizement, the AFSCME quotes King on “full-time jobs for part-time income” and finds it applicable to their current fight.