On September 30th, the CIRHR and Woodsworth College hosted the 2020 Sefton-Williams Memorial Lecture in its first-ever online format. "Organizing With ‘Heart’: New Ways of Building Worker Movements" was delivered by Kris Rondeau, Director of AFSCME New England Organizing Project.
During the event, Acting Director Dionne Pohler announced two new awards for CIRHR graduate students: the Matt Dowdle Leadership in IRHR Award, created in memory of alumnus Matt Dowdle (MIR 2004), and the Tingting Zhang Prize for Research Distinction in the Doctoral Program, created with the support of alumna Tingting Zhang (PhD 2017). Professor Pohler also announced the 2020 winner of the Sefton-Williams Award for Contributions to Labour Relations, Brad James (MIR 1987).
Hosted by Woodsworth College and the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources, this annual lecture is now named in honour of Larry Sefton and Lynn Williams. The Sefton-Williams Memorial Lecture series presents topics of interest to scholars and practitioners of labour-management relations. For more information on this lecture series, please visit the CIRHR Library website.
Watch the event recording here:
Speaker Bio:
Kris Rondeau is the director of AFSCME New England Organizing Project. She has been a union organizer and contract negotiator for over four decades. Kris and her colleagues navigated The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) to victory on May 17, 1988. Members of her team went on to organize UMASS Memorial Medical Center and UMASS Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts. This was the largest successful union drive in central Massachusetts over the last 60 years. Kris continues to guide the UMASS Worcester union (State Healthcare and Research Employees aka SHARE) as well as the Union of Social Workers (USW) at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, MA. Over the years, Kris and her team have organized 30,000 workers, mostly women in the service sector industries of healthcare and higher education.