It's MLK Day on Monday and time to remember that Greenville County in South Carolina (where this humble blogger once lived) is still the only county in South Carolina that does not recognize that day as a paid holiday for its employees.
After holding out for years, in 2003, the City Council offered County workers five fixed holidays and they could choose five more to take off. The County workers chose to take a floating holiday instead of MLK Day. Now, MLK Day is a Federal holiday, so I'm guessing the Council could just, you know, just declare it a paid holiday. Seems instead they just wanted to avoid controversy and pass the hot potato to the employees. Apparently, thanks to the recent elections, the Council may now finally be poised to declare the holiday. So maybe there will be an MLK day in GVL in 2006.
Back in '03, Jesse Jackson, a Greenville native, lead 8000 people in a march through the city in protest of this nonsense. He's leading a similar march this Saturday the 15th, on King's actual birthday. More power to him.
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