I was hired at the Twinsburg, Ohio, plant of the Chrysler Corporation in 1987 as a tool-and-die maker, one of a handful of women in skilled trades. Within a year, I began to experience sexist treatment and the inevitable lesbian-baiting faced by all women who do a “man’s job.” In the summer of 1989, I began to complain about constant sexual harassment from a particular employee. This worker’s response was to launch a homophobic hate campaign. It began with a can of spray paint with “dyke repellent” written on it, followed by a badge reading “Save Holland, put your finger in a dyke.” For six months the harassment was almost daily, including physical threats such as a block of wood with a half circle cut out of it and “place neck here” written on it.  My UAW Local 122 union representatives asked the harassers to stop, but to no avail. Management went from being merely unhelpful to downright hostile. [1]

            Was this workplace harassment and discrimination illegal? Not in Ohio, nor in thirty-eight other states. If the physical threats had been carried out, would that homophobic violence been covered by hate-crime laws? Not in Ohio, nor twenty-eight other states. Was this discrimination addressed in her union contract? Not in the Big Three auto contracts (with Chrysler, Ford, and GM), nor in thousands of union contracts across America.

            Local 122 was able to help Grevatt a little. The union won compensation for stolen and damaged personal belongings. When she got a disciplinary layoff for “careless workmanship,” the union was able to prove that the cause of her inability to concentrate was the relentless harassment. Grevatt finally got back pay. Her case and the ordeals suffered by another gay Chrysler worker, Ron Woods, were both covered in the UAW’s national magazine Solidarity.[2] In 1994 Grevatt met Woods and they began to collaborate through PAW.

But it was not until 1993 that the UAW agreed to ask for sexual orientation to be included in the nondiscrimination clause. Only in 1999 did Chrysler agree to this demand—and then, only after sympathetic media coverage of Pride at Work’s National Day of Protest and the Internet-organized deluge of protest e-mails to Chrysler. That same year, the union and the Big Three auto firms agreed to study the feasibility of domestic partner health benefits, and such benefits were finally implemented in August 2000.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People Are Everywhere and Need to Organize

            Martha Grevatt’s story may seem extreme, but it is a common one for lesbians and gay men in blue-collar and skilled-craft work. In white-collar and service occupations, employers’ hidden discomforts with homosexuals can block hiring and promotions. In some states since the late 1970s, antigay hate referenda have attempted to purge gays and lesbians from teaching and social service jobs. And many jobs where they can be freely “out” are lower-paying ones, as in lesbian and gay bars, restaurants, and social service agencies. Lesbians and gays don’t get equal pay for equal work when their  families don’t receive the health insurance and pension benefits that straight families receive through their jobs.

How many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers are there?  No one knows for sure, since that question is not addressed on the census, and the answer varies with who is asked which survey questions. But estimates range from 2 percent to 10 percent of workers—between 3 and 13 million people.[3]

Most Americans surveyed believe that the kind of discrimination Grevatt complained about is already covered by federal civil rights law, but it is not. Furthermore, most states have never adopted a law against workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. Only one state, Vermont, has legalized gay marriage. There are only eight statewide domestic partnership laws that grant some, but not all, of the benefits and obligations of marriage to committed lesbian and gay couples and their children. Most union contracts still don’t include sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination provisions, and most union contracts don’t include domestic partner benefits.

But hundreds of union contracts covering hundreds of thousands of workers do prohibit this discrimination and do provide domestic partner benefits. The labor movement’s progress to date has resulted from lesbian and gay workers’ efforts to organize, bargain, and pursue grievances through their unions. Thereby they have addressed key problems both on the job and in their communities. These efforts were given a boost when PAW became officially incorporated into the national AFL-CIO in 1997.

Civil Rights and the AFL-CIO

            Since the 1960s, racial, national, ethnic, and women’s union groups have organized outside of the AFL-CIO to pressure the labor movement to fight employer and government discrimination and to deal with the discrimination that unions, their members, and their leaders have practiced against other union members. Over time, the AFL-CIO has moved to address these issues and to bring these groups inside as “constituency groups.” These union efforts have given the groups more legitimacy, access, and resources, but they also have posed the danger of co-optation—of sticking to “safe” issues and rewarding moderate leaders. It is no longer controversial for unions to give this official support to equality for women and racial minorities in organizing, at the bargaining table, in leadership, and in politics.

But, given the strong homophobia that still exists among many union leaders and members, it was indeed momentous when, in 1997, the AFL-CIO Executive Council voted unanimously to incorporate PAW as an official constituency group. This vote was the culmination of decades of grassroots gay labor activism in major unions and major cities—a milestone on the long road to equality and safety for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers. Official recognition, in turn, provided wider visibility, new funding, and full-time staffing. It created an organizing center that could identify and support lesbian and gay unionists in the many workplaces, unions, and communities where discrimination and harassment continue to flourish, especially outside the large liberal cities and the large liberal unions.

            The new leadership of the AFL-CIO facilitated the final steps toward this official recognition, but this vote was not a liberal gift from above. John Sweeney won election as the AFL-CIO’s leader because he successfully articulated the need for labor to change in order to survive—including by embracing diversity and harnessing to union organizing and union building the activist energy of the women’s, civil rights, immigrant rights, and lesbian/gay movements. This policy was incorporated in his slate’s platform and into his administration’s practices. As president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Sweeney had learned from and supported lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists in his own union.[4] Similarly, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) president, Gerald McEntee, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president, Sandra Feldman, had worked directly with their own national lesbian/gay committees. Knowing that PAW had the support of these unions—three of the largest and fastest-growing unions in the Federation—was important in the final AFL-CIO vote. Yet that support had only developed through decades of grassroots organizing in lesbian/gay union caucuses in these and other unions and in multi-union city-based gay labor groups.

            Over the past twenty years, lesbian/gay caucuses have been built in union locals, districts, and internationals. Because lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are a small (and sometimes invisible) portion of the total workforce, caucuses have formed most easily in large, urban locals with a critical mass of gay members (e.g., municipal workers) or in jobs with a large proportion of lesbian or gay workers (e.g., restaurant, health care). Also, because gay rights is still a young movement in labor, caucuses have formed first in unions with civil rights/feminist policies and structures in place, such as service, public sector, and education unions that already have a Women’s Committee, an African American Committee, a Hispanic Committee, an Asian American Committee, or a Civil Rights Committee. [5]

            Workers form these kinds of caucuses in unions to tackle employer discrimination through bargaining, to raise awareness and pride in the union through cultural and educational events, and to promote union support for legislation or political candidates. Caucuses are the best vehicles for changing union policy and supporting a bargaining agenda of nondiscrimination clauses and domestic partner benefits (including pensions). They promote visibility, from gay pride exhibits to sensitivity and issue training for union staff and members. During union-organizing campaigns, caucus members can be important links to unorganized lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers who don’t otherwise perceive the labor movement as a place where they will be accepted and their issues will be taken seriously.

LGBT Union Caucuses

            Typically, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) union caucuses begin with individual activists in one workplace or local. Lesbian and gay workers come together to promote a nondiscrimination policy, both on principle and in an effort to lessen the chances of their getting fired or of missing out on promotions if they come out at work. The next step is often to organize for domestic partner benefits, since long-time lovers generally are not covered as spouses are through employer-based health insurance. These local activists later join forces (often at conventions) in national LGBT committees, which, in turn, can support activists in more conservative settings.

One example is the Lavender Caucus of SEIU. Whether or not there are proportionally more lesbian and gay workers in health care, there are proportionally more caucuses in the health-care unions and locals. One reason may be that the entire industry was forced by the gay movement to come to terms with homophobia as its institutions grappled with the AIDS crisis. There are also proportionally more lesbian/gay caucuses in the West, especially in the liberal cities such as San Francisco, that have served as refuges for gays and lesbians from all over the United States. Two of the veteran grassroots gay/labor activists who founded SEIU’s Lavender Caucus were West Coast health-care workers. Little Rock, Arkansas, native Bob Lewis, like many other southern gays and lesbians, was a refugee from homophobia in his hometown. After completing college and working for nine years in Texas, he migrated to San Francisco, where he became a psychiatric technician in a unionized hospital, St. Mary’s. Beginning in 1978 he was an active and openly gay member of SEIU Local 250, and by 1987 he was a shop steward, negotiating committee member, and strike leader. In this industry and in this union, he was accepted as a leader regardless of his sexual orientation, which would have been much less likely in the South. Subsequently, he campaigned on a reform slate and won election as the local vice-president for San Francisco (city and county). Naturally, he was present in 1991 when a Lavender Caucus was formed at the SEIU Western Region’s Women’s Rights Conference. Two years later, he was one of the four SEIU activists  featured in the national union magazine article “Gay, Proud and Union”—a first in the U.S. labor movement. Since then, he has helped the caucus grow nationwide. [6]

            Some gay and lesbian workers come out in response to homophobic attacks on their civil rights in the political arena, outside the workplace. This was the story of another founder of SEIU’s Lavender Caucus. In Seattle, in 1989, Marcy Johnsen had gone back to school after sixteen years as an LPN to become an RN at Fircrest, a public institution for the developmentally disabled. She was recruited as an activist in District 1199 NW of SEIU by another nurse who knew she was a lesbian, and at that time she was out only to individuals she trusted. A natural leader at work, she was soon elected as one of the rank-and-file vice-presidents of the district. But she had not yet come out to everyone on the executive board in 1993 when the Hands Off Washington organizers came to the union for help in defeating two statewide anti-gay-rights initiatives. Johnsen decided to come out to the union leaders and then (as part of a panel) to a two-hundred-delegate assembly, which ultimately resolved to join the fight. She took the risk of coming out so publicly because she felt so strongly that she and her union had to help fight these hate-filled referenda. During the campaign, Johnsen did counter-tabling at malls where hate groups were petitioning. She compared that effort to “making house calls when you’re trying to organize. You don’t know what kind of reception you’re going to get . . .  ‘Thanks for sharing that information’ or ‘F—k you! I’m a redneck and agree with them [the initiatives].’” [7]

Johnsen was another of the seasoned gay labor activists who founded SEIU’s Lavender Caucus. She was thrilled to join forces with Lewis and with women like Becky Capoferri and Ann Montague of the Oregon Public Employees Union, an SEIU affiliate. Government work is another sector with a disproportionate number of LGBT union committees. First, it is more highly unionized than the private sector, and second, government tends to be a more liberal employer because its top decision makers are either politicians or appointees who are accountable to politicians. It is a lot easier to pressure a politician than a corporate CEO. Finally, public sector union locals are often very large (tens of thousands of members), so they have a large enough gay membership to sustain an ongoing gay committee. Capoferri and Montague had organized for years around workplace issues for gays and lesbians. They fought for nondiscrimination and domestic partner contract language and developed the first-ever Steward Training Curriculum on Homophobia. Like Johnsen, Capoferri and Montague were also veterans of union fights against hate ballots in their state.

Once these and other activists found each other, the Lavender Caucus swiftly started networking and organizing nationally for the successful adoption of a lesbian/gay component to the “Civil and Human Rights” resolution at the 1992 SEIU convention. They wanted to spread the fight for gay rights beyond their existing western health-care and public sector base. They seized an opportunity the next year when SEIU President Sweeney, other national officers, and executive board members from all over the country were in San Francisco for the AFL-CIO convention. The caucus conducted a technical training session on domestic partner benefits (debunking employer and insurance objections) for the entire top leadership of the union. This is one of the experiences that Sweeney carries with him when he steps out front for gay rights and partner benefits. The depth of union and gay organizing experience that SEIU veterans brought to the Lavender Caucus and then to the founding of PAW is typical of national and local LGBT union caucuses.

City-based LGBT Labor Groups

            The first lesbian/gay labor network started in San Francisco in the late 1970s and became a formal organization in 1982. Two groups followed in 1986:  in New York City, Peter Tenney, a migrant from San Francisco, initiated one; and in Boston, another emerged from a mutual support group. These organizations first developed in large cities that had both a strong labor movement and a strong gay rights movement, and therefore had the critical mass and infrastructure to support such an organization.

            City groups are the best vehicles for mutual support for otherwise-isolated lesbians and gays in smaller or hostile unions where it is not possible to form a gay union committee. At the same time, by reaching out communitywide to lesbian and gay unionists, they can bring together groups of people from the same large locals who did not previously know each other. These newly networked individuals then can establish caucuses.  This was the genesis of LAGIC (Lesbian and Gay Issues Committee) in AFSCME District 37 in New York City and of the Gay and Lesbian Concerns Committee in SEIU Local 509 in Boston.

            Especially for legislative and electoral campaigns, the labor movement operates through multi-union labor structures, such as citywide central labor councils. Citywide gay labor groups are needed to get labor support for gay rights bills and to oppose labor endorsements of homophobic candidates. They are also useful for raising working-class issues within the LGBT movement. There are several paths that a citywide group can take to link these two communities. 

            For example, part of union culture is that disparate people come together around a shared circumstance(i.e.,being co-workers) and bond with each other through a struggle against a common enemy(i.e., the employer) for common goals (i.e., raises, better benefits, and more respect from supervisors). Often, individuals who were alienated or isolated from each other socially can forge a powerful union kinship, bridging age, race, gender, and sexual orientation. This can be even more powerful during a strike, when unionists go through so many physical and economic trials together.

Knowing this, lesbian and gay unionists in San Francisco established credibility with other unionists through active and visible strike and organizing campaign support for every union—not just ones that were friendly to gays. All kinds of workers and union leaders developed a grudging appreciation for these queer allies. In their most famous support campaign, Howard Wallace, a founder of the Lesbian and Gay Labor Alliance (LGLA), worked with a Teamster leader, Allan Baird, and gay community leader (and later city supervisor) Harvey Milk to drive union-boycotted Coors beer out of every gay and lesbian bar in the city in the mid-1970s. Their militancy and effectiveness profoundly impressed union leaders at both the city and state levels. Subsequently, these lesbian and gay labor activists played a crucial bridging role in the successful fight against the California Briggs Initiative, which would have outlawed lesbian or gay teachers, as well as any teachers who supported gay rights. The militant gay rights movement was actively opposed to this hate initiative, but the gay labor activists were able to bring traditional unions and the teachers union into the fray. These unions mobilized thousands of straights to vote against the measure. By this point, the LGLA was in a position to solicit top labor leaders’ support for the pioneering 1983 AFL-CIO resolution opposing discrimination based on sexual orientation and supporting domestic partner benefits, as well as for the resolution opposing anti-gay-rights ballot initiatives in 1993.  These put unions on record as supporting lesbian and gay rights well ahead of most other straight, liberal institutions such as the Democratic Party, civil rights groups, and liberal religious denominations.

            The Gay and Lesbian Labor Activists Network (GALLAN) in Boston was always focused on a different angle of the gay–labor relationship—class differences within the lesbian and gay community. They sought to raise a progressive, working-class perspective within the gay community and to unite with the progressives within the labor movement.

In 1990 GALLAN confronted a new kind of politician, the Republican governor, William F. Weld. Like some other Republicans after him (e.g., NYC’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani), he supported some gay rights but attacked public sector unions.  Weld supported the state’s gay rights bill and partial partner benefits—but only for his gay management appointees and not for unionized state workers. Weld also supported a Citizens for Limited Taxation’s referendum proposal to cut taxes and services. The labor movement was obviously opposing this initiative, and GALLAN leaders vowed to take the issue to the gay community. They used brochures that outlined how the proposal would have cut services for working-class lesbians and gays, including people with HIV/AIDS and would have eliminated the jobs of unionized state employees, including gay and lesbian workers.  At the same time, there was a petition drive to have a referendum on repealing the state’s gay rights law. The gay community naturally was opposing this effort, and GALLAN vowed to take this issue to the labor movement.

GALLAN activists and allies ousted the gay Republicans (friends of Weld) who had taken over the statewide lesbian/gay political organization, and the GALLAN group led a grassroots political campaign that defeated both the tax and service cuts and the gay rights repeal. Heavy voter turnout in the gay and working-class districts they had targeted earned GALLAN a seat at the table in both the labor and gay movements. GALLAN built on these victories by organizing LGBT labor groups in every state in New England and eventually persuading the Massachusetts Federation of Labor to include key gay rights votes among the “labor votes” on which legislators are evaluated before union endorsements. They have made gay rights a structural part of labor’s agenda.

Another approach taken by citywide groups is to focus inside the labor movement and build up gay structures within multiple unions to deal with gay workplace issues.  Shortly after the Lesbian and Gay Labor Network (LGLN) was founded in New York City in 1986, domestic partner health insurance became a real possibility for municipal workers.  The availability of partner benefits was a political issue for the gay movement in the NYC mayoral race.  Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund was midway through a partner benefit lawsuit brought with the Gay Teachers Association against NYC and the Board of Education. Negotiations were coming up for all city workers. LGLN helped launch a gay committee in the largest (200,000-member) city workers union local. By coordinating with other municipal union caucuses, the Lambda teachers’ lawsuit, and gay rights political organizations, LGLN was part of the victorious coalition that won not only partner benefits for all city workers, including teachers, in legislation and at the bargaining table but also a domestic partner registration law that helped private sector workers go on to fight for partner benefits. LGLN saw building LGBT committees as the main way to build lesbian and gay power in the New York City labor movement. It helped organize and support LGBT committees in many unions:  AFSCME District Council 37 (and many of its locals), Public Employee Federation (PEF), Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1180, Transport Workers Union (TWU), Firefighters (UFA), and National Writers Union (NWU). But its most enduring achievement was the publication in 1990 of a very practical organizing handbook, Pride at Work:  Organizing for Lesbian & Gay Rights in Unions. [8]  More than 7,000 copies were sold, not only in New York City but nationwide through ads in Labor Notes, distribution by the Coalition of Labor Union Women  (CLUW), and its use as a text in labor studies classes. It helped activists across the country to organize union committees, bargain for domestic partner contract language, and deal with AIDS in the workplace.

Seasoned activists from all these city groups, along with gay/lesbian union caucus veterans, founded PAW in 1994. Together, they blended the media-savvy, direct-action tactics of ACT UP and Queer Nation with sophisticated union organizing and bargaining strategies. PAW is different from some other gay rights groups that include only lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Because unions organize around common enemies rather than through identity-based politics, PAW views its constituency as including supportive straight unionists, such as those with gay relatives. These co-workers are stung by homophobic jokes, too, and they also struggle with coming out as the mother of a gay man or the brother of a lesbian.

PAW drew support from other union-based civil rights groups. Like the rest of the women’s movement, CLUW has had to work to overcome the historical legacy of feminist anxiety about lesbians. When feminists are attacked as “man-haters” (i.e., lesbians), it takes courage to assert that CLUW organizes gays and straights together. CLUW actively lobbied conservative unions on PAW’s behalf. Similarly, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) has not shied away from controversial issues, even since being incorporated into the AFL-CIO structure.  APALA has aggressively and successfully organized through both Asian American union caucuses and city-based Asian American labor groups to move the AFL-CIO to reverse its position on immigrants and adopt a policy that embraces immigrant workers and immigration reform.

Many union civil rights leaders have been touched by gay labor activism within their own unions. Clayola Brown, the vice-president and civil rights director of UNITE and an African American member of the newly enlarged (and more diverse) AFL-CIO Executive Council, had negotiated nondiscrimination language on sexual orientation in the 1980s in industrial laundries. In one of her New Jersey shops, she even had language on “change of sex” discrimination based on the taunting of a transgender shop steward. Just before the 1997 AFL-CIO Executive Council vote on PAW’s affiliation, Brown and other PAW advocates formed tag teams that visited conservative union presidents. “At the Executive Council meeting, there was a unanimous voice vote with no public objections,” she recalled.[9] They had turned the tide so effectively that even the most conservative building trades unions felt too isolated to take a public stand against this affirmation of lesbian and gay rights.

PAW’s Major Challenges

            The question that now faces PAW is how effectively it will use its new legitimacy in labor to broaden and advance the organized base of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender unionists. Legitimation—funding, staff and access—brings with it the twin dangers of complacency and co-optation. When PAW operated on a shoestring, it had to rely on stronger chapters in liberal cities. Now that it has resources, will it reach out or stay with its established base? When everyone had to pay their own way, only the die-hard activists came to conferences. Now that PAW and big unions pay expenses, will the conferences start to attract lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender union members who are looking for a junket vacation instead of activists who will work hard at serious strategy sessions? As basic gay rights become less controversial in the AFL-CIO, will some see PAW leadership as a stepping stone to a high-paying labor job? Will leaders shy away from controversial issues that could jeopardize such a career track? Or will queer labor activists find ways to avoid these pitfalls and keep pushing the frontiers of gay labor organizing?

This is what a pioneering agenda could look like:

• Every shop steward and every union staffer should be trained to deal effectively with the problems of homophobia and discrimination that lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender union members face.
• Every union organizer should be prepared to incorporate lesbian and gay workers into organizing campaigns. Openly lesbian and gay union organizers should be available for campaigns at predominantly queer worksites.
• Every union contract should include comprehensive nondiscrimination language (for transgender, as well as gay, workers) and complete domestic partner benefits, including family and medical leave, bereavement leave, health insurance, and pensions.
• Every national union—not just the white-collar and service sector ones—should have resources such as committees, workshops at conventions, and advocates at national headquarters so that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers can find each other, give mutual support, and push for institutional change.
• As more and more straight union members learn from shared struggle that lesbians and gays are truly their sisters and brothers, labor and all its leaders should become staunch political supporters of gay rights and enemies of hate.
• Working-class queers—not affluent white gay men—should have a dominant voice (commensurate with their numbers) in the LGBT movement.
• Just as PAW is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse LGBT organizations, gay labor organizing should strengthen the queer movement’s commitment to fighting racism and anti-immigrant prejudice.
• This program needs to be carried out, not just in public sector and service worker unions, but also in manufacturing and craft unions, and not just in the big coastal cities but also in the South.