Recently, we at Wellstone Action were asked to participate in the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Academy for Leadership during their Creating Change conference in Denver. Creating Change is an annual gathering of gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, bisexual activists and allies -- and the opportunity to network and really share strategy is incredible.
We were asked to do two training sessions and we were given free reign on the topics and subjects. With the political climate as it is these days, I submitted a topic of Gays, Guns, and God - Building bridges between the GLBT community and labor. The basis of the session was offering people who might not have a history of working with the labor community some background on labor and also start people thinking about ways that labor and the glbt community can begin working together for their mutual legislative goals.
This year organized labor has their best opportunity to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and the glbt community has the opportunity to pass a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Working together at the grassroots level will make both efforts stronger.
Why should labor care about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act?
Currently, in 30 states, an employee can be fired simply because an employer may believe they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. The employer doesn't need to prove that the person is gay, proving otherwise would be the responsibility of the employee. Most people, including myself, believe that this is wrong. In the labor community it strikes at the core of the belief that an injury to one is an injury to all. Firing someone because of the prejudices of the employer is wrong. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act changes the current civil rights law to include the terms "sexual orientation and gender identity" to the list of characteristics that are protected in employment. (keep in mind that this applies only to businesses that are 50 employees or more - that is an issue for another day)
For years labor contracts have included "sexual orientation" and in some cases "gender identity" in the list of catagories that are protected. The glbt community has a self interest in seeing more union contracts negotiated and should be fully mobilized behind the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act institutes card check as an option for workers to exercise if they want to form a union in their workplace. It is a myth that the Employee Free Choice Act takes democracy away from workers, in fact it offers more workers the ability to have a union by making the playing field just a little more level. To read more about the message and framing behind the Employee Free Choice Act, check out Erik Peterson's post here.
The great news is that Pride at Work (the auxiliary group of the AFL-CIO that is comprised of mostly GLBT union members) and Stonewall Democrats (the auxiliary group of the Democratic National Committee comprised of GLBT people and their allies) are beginning to work together on messaging the Employee Free Choice Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to their respective communities. This is coalition building at its finest and something that I am very excited about. This is a great way to start building bridges between the GLBT communities and labor across the board.
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