Less than half of corporate America give employees MLK Day off – Study Giving their workers Martin Luther King Jr. Day off seems like the bare minimum they can't afford

Every year on January 16th, American corporations make mealymouthed statements of solidarity with Black Americans but only 45% of U.S. companies give employees a paid day off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, according to a 2019 Bloomberg Law survey, as reported by CNBC.

Since 1983, the third Monday in January has been observed as a federal holiday that honors civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Only in year 2000 was the holiday observed in all 50 states. While the number of companies that observe MLK day as a holiday has been trending upward (only 28% of companies gave employees the day off in 2009), and it’s more popular with employers than other federal holidays like President’s Day and Veteran’s Day, it’s still a little shocking that fewer than half of all companies give their workers the day off, according to reports.

After the pandemic decimated communities of color; and widespread protests were triggered by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police, and that was capped off with the election of Georgia’s first Black senator on the same day that a white supremacist mob stormed the U.S. Capitol carrying Confederate flags, it would seem appropriate for every company to observe the holiday dedicated to America’s most prominent Black civil rights icon.

Unduemi Marshall

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