USW International Vice President of Human Affairs Fred Redmond this week appeared on The Leslie Marshall Show to discuss how the wealthiest class in America has created a culture of hate to pin workers against workers and divide the country based on race, gender and religion. He states that the current political climate has ignited this division and is a serious threat to all workers.
“It’s easy for people to point at blacks and the welfare system and say, ‘Those people are the problem’ as opposed to pointing at what the real problem is, which is the economic structure in this country and the 1 percent who are harvesting all of the wealth at the expense of the rest of us,” Redmond said.
Redmond also spoke about the AFL-CIO’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference that was held this past weekend in Washington, D.C., and how it served as a great platform for a discussion on the subject of racial and economic divides.
“We have to move beyond this issue of race and we have to embrace each other as brothers and sisters,” Redmond said. “We have to just reject the politics of race and religion and unite behind a common cause of economic and social justice.”
The AFL-CIO last year also formed the Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice, of which Redmond is a co-chair. One of the main goals is to facilitate discussions amongst labor leaders around disparities facing American workers and how to make the labor movement more diverse. To Redmond, these conversations are difficult but crucial when it comes to strengthening unions and uniting people as a whole.
“The labor movement in the past has not been open to all people,” Redmond said. “We have to acknowledge the past in order to move into the future with a diverse and powerful movement that is going to address economic issues that affect people.”
All of these issues discussed on The Leslie Marshall Show were covered in Redmond’s most recent blog on The Huffington Post and can be found here.
Background Material
2016 Martin Luther King Jr. Civil and Human Rights Conference
Executive Council Creates Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice
Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice
AFL-CIO Launches Plan for Labor Commission on Racial and Economic Justice