The dedication ceremony for the monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the National Mall has been postponed as the East Coast braces for Hurricane Irene. Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress notes that the $120 million monument to one of the greatest champions of workers’ rights in American history was assembled by Chinese laborers. The American union whose membership has helped to assemble every major monument erected in Washington since the Civil War watched from the sidelines, despite a promise to hire union labor to complete the King monument.

The foundation that built the monument promised in writing to hire members of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC) to assemble the 159 blocks of granite that comprise the two sculptures at the site. However, the foundation reneged, though it apparently hired BAC members do to other work on the project.

The sculptor of record, Master Lei Yixin, who won the blinded international competition to design the monument, brought over nearly a dozen workers from China to help him finish the project on site.

It has been reported that the Chinese workers were unpaid. BAC investigator Francis Jacobberger and Washington Post reporter Annys Shin learned in the fall of 2010 that the men were working for “national honor.” In other words, they weren’t getting paid while they were in the United States, working on Dr. King. They expected to get paid at least something when they got back to China, but they didn’t know how much. It’s not clear whether they ever got paid.

Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis while preparing to lead a march of unionized sanitation workers striking for higher wages and better working conditions. Displacing union workers with cheap labor from China is a betrayal of his legacy.

[Photo credit: Black History Album, Creative Commons.]