April 2000

Pride at Work organizing

Jan Kollwitz

Chicago-On March 11-12 over 3500 women responded to a call by the AFL-CIO to meet in Chicago and talk about what they have in common as workers. Women came from all over the country and from every line of work-steelworkers, railroad workers, auto workers, teachers, garment workers, office workers.

The best-attended and liveliest workshop I went to, with about 40 women, was on Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Workers, organized by Pride at Work, a decentralized constituency group within the AFL-CIO. Pride at Work gave out materials to help people organize within their local unions- language to include in contracts, as well as tips on bargaining for domestic partner benefits as an equal pay issue and broadening the base of support by making sure unmarried heterosexual couples are also covered.

Much of the discussion centered around transgender issues. A Black woman steelworker asked for advice because neither the men nor the women in her local want to shower with a transgender worker currently in transition from male to female. Several women offered ideas, including one who spoke of the need to educate other union members because IF WE HAVE A UNION THEN WE'RE INCLUSIVE, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT A UNION I S. A woman from Canada pointed out the need to be careful when using expressions like SEXUAL ORIENTATION since many transgender people regard themselves as heterosexual, adding that in Canada people now prefer the term SEXUAL IDENTITY.

People were hungry for success stories. One woman announced, to great applause, that as she was boarding a plane for this conference, the legislators in her home state of Connecticut had just passed a domestic partnership law. Another woman described a company in upstate New York, American Flint Glass, where any worker who engages in gay-baiting can be fired under the company's zero tolerance policy.

Listening to these hope-filled, determined voices made me think back to a Pride at Work conference in 1996 where we first learned of Allan Berube's work in unearthing the story of the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union from the 1930s until the 1950s. Their slogan- NO RACE-BAITING, NO RED-BAITING, NO QUEEN-BATING -captured succinctly both the theory and the practice of this militant local union. That is, until the McCarthy era enabled racism, homophobia and red-baiting to destroy that practice and thereby end this magnificent chapter in labor history. It is very exciting that g/l/b/t activists are now able to organize within the labor movement at a time when queer liberation has moved from an Idea to a self-aware, thinking mass movement, a movement that has gained at least a foothold of legitimacy.