Vice President Kamala Harris to visit Durham next week, her office says

Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Durham on Wednesday, her office announced on Saturday.

The vice president will be joined by Labor Secretary Marty Walsh to discuss “the Biden-Harris Administration’s investments in our workers to create good-paying, union jobs,” Harris’s office said.

More details about Harris’s trip will be released later, her office said.

The visit comes a few weeks after the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, chaired by Harris and Walsh, issued a report with nearly 70 recommendations on how the federal government can promote organizing and collective bargaining for employees in the public and private sectors.

The recommendations also include ways to raise awareness among workers about “their existing right to join and/or organize a union, and the legally-defined process of how to do so.”

The task force was established by President Joe Biden via executive order last April.

Harris was last in North Carolina, a visit to Charlotte, in December. She was in Greensboro and High Point in April 2021 to talk about the administration’s infrastructure plan.

During that trip, Harris also stopped at the historic F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime in downtown Greensboro, where four N.C. A&T State University students made history more than 60 years prior when they insisted on sitting at an all-white lunch counter — a major moment in the civil rights movement.

While she was there, Harris — the nation’s first Black vice president — took a seat at the same lunch counter where the so-called Greensboro Four had started the sit-ins.

This story was originally published February 26, 2022 at 12:05 PM.

Avi Bajpai

The News & Observer

919-346-4817

Avi Bajpai is a state politics reporter for The News & Observer. He previously covered breaking news and public safety. Contact him at abajpai@newsobserver.com or (919) 346-4817.