Lenore Miller, one of the highest-ranking women in the U.S. labor movement, will present "Women and the Future of Unions," Monday, March 11, at 12:15 p.m. in Room 105 of the ILR Conference Center. The lec ture, sponsored by the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Advisory Committee on the Status of Women, is free and open to the public.
Miller will be on campus from March 11 to 13 as the 1996 Alice B. Grant Labor Leader in Residence. During her visit, Miller will speak to various ILR classes and will be the featured speaker at a collective bargaining workshop.
Miller has been president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) of the AFL-CIO since September 1986. The RWDSU -- the largest union in the United States to be headed by a woman -- represents 100,000 members throughout North America in retail, food processing and distribution, general manufacturing and clerical and service areas.
In 1987 Miller became the first woman union president to be elected an AFL-CIO vice president and a member of the federation's executive council. She has held numerous leadership posts in her 35 years as a union member.
Her non-union positions include roles as vice chairman of the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabili ties and president of the Jewish Labor Committee. In 1992 Miller took on one of the most public roles a union official can have: She served as grand marshal of the New York City Labor Day Parade.
The Alice B. Grant Labor Leader in Residence program, named for the former direc tor of the ILR Extension Office in Rochester, brings to campus annually a major figure in the labor world. Past labor leaders in residence have include Lynn Williams, former president of the United Steelworkers of American (1995); Susan Bianchi-Sand, former national president of the Association of Flight Attendants (1994); Morton Bahr, president of the Communications Workers of America (1993); and John Sweeney, cur rent president of the AFL-CIO (1992).