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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 4, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Gay Unionists to Meet in Oakland, Calif.

By Martha Grevatt

Pride at Work, the National Organization for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Labor, will hold its second national conference June 28-29 at the Oakland, Calif., headquarters of Service Employees Local 250.

Trade unionists from across the United States, as well as some from overseas, plan to attend. They will be from many different unions, representing all sectors of the working class.

Pride At Work held its founding conference two years ago in New York in conjunction with the Stonewall 25 commemoration. Since then PAW has established chapters and recruited members in every geographical region of the country. PAW has organized contingents in many Pride marches.

In a significant shift from the situation only a few years ago, the top leadership of the labor movement has shown strong support for the group--and for union solidarity with gay workers.

On March 28, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney wrote to hundreds of affiliated unions and labor bodies to urge their support for the upcoming conference. Sweeney encouraged support "through financial contribution, by assigning staff ... and by publicizing the meeting within your own organizations."

History of Solidarity

Pride At Work did not just appear suddenly. Its existence as a national organization is the culmination of two decades of solidarity between the gay movement and the labor movement.

In the late 1970s, unions and gay activists joined forces to build the boycott of Coors beer, and against the Briggs initiative in California--a ballot measure to ban gay and lesbian teachers in the public schools.

Briggs was defeated. Several other anti-gay initiatives have been defeated in various states with the support of the labor movement.

Two groups of unionists--the Gay Labor Alliance in California and the Lesbian and Gay Labor Network in New York--formed in the 1980s. Members of Workers World Party were active in founding and building the New York group-and, in 1987, in building labor support for the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

On Oct. 10, 1987, the day before the march, 500 people crowded the lobby of the AFL-CIO headquarters for the firstever gay-labor solidarity reception. Union activist and Workers World labor reporter Shelley Ettinger co-chaired the event with Howard Wallace, a long-time gay labor organizer from San Francisco. Ettinger addressed the marchers the next day.

Almost six years later, at the third national march in April 1993, another reception was held at the AFL-CIO. This one was even bigger, and after the 1993 march activists issued a call to form a national organization for lesbian and gay unionists. By the time the New York conference took place the next year, local groups had been established in several major cities.

This year's conference will continue the tradition of bringing the labor and gay movements together. Keynote speakers at the San Francisco conference include national representatives from the AFL-CIO, Service Employees, and the Farm Workers, along with the mayors of Oakland and San Francisco.

Among the workshop topics are union organizing at both non-profit concerns and businesses inside the community; recognizing and involving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered workers of color; lesbian pioneers in nontraditional work; fighting for equal rights and benefits; and using labor's resources to fight the right.

Among the scheduled speakers at a workshop on labor and the elections is John Peter Daly, Workers World and Peace and Freedom Party's candidate for Congress in California's 29th District.

The writer, a member of the board of Pride At Work, was Workers World Party's candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio in 1992. She got 300,000 votes.

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