United Steelworkers (USW) International Vice President Fred Redmond will present this year’s McBride Lecture, “Today’s Struggle for Racial and Economic Justice,” at the University of Notre Dame on Sept. 21 (Thursday) at 6 p.m. The lecture will be held in the Eck Visitors Center Auditorium and is free and open to the public; a reception will immediately follow.
Redmond is co-chair of the AFL-CIO’s Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice, which was created in 2015 to “facilitate a broad conversation with local labor leaders around racial and economic disparities and institutional biases and identifies ways to become more inclusive as the new entrants to the labor force diversify.” His lecture will address that committee’s conclusions, just published as the Racial and Economic Justice Report.
A leader in the wide labor movement, Redmond holds leadership positions in the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the AFL-CIO Executive Council and Working America, and he is chairman of the board of directors of the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
“While Americans have made strides in the past few decades at reducing racial discrimination in the labor market, workers of color continue to earn less than their white counterparts, and a majority toil in low-paying jobs with limited opportunities,” commented history professor Dan Graff, director of the Higgins Labor Program at Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns. “We look forward to hearing what Mr. Redmond, an experienced labor leader with long experience fighting for workplace inclusion, will say on the intertwined subjects of economic justice and racial equality, as well as the role unions might play here.”
The McBride Lecture was established in 1977 by the United Steelworkers (USW) “to better understand the principles of unionism and our economy.” It honors the USW’s fourth international president, Lloyd McBride, who served from 1977 to 1983.
The lecture is cosponsored by the USW and the Higgins Labor Studies Program at the Center for Social Concerns. Mr. Redmond will be available for media interviews during his visit to Notre Dame.
Originally published by at conductorshare.nd.edu on September 15, 2017.