Queer Activism, Feminism and the Transnational Labor Movement

As the experiences, issues and concerns of LGBT workers become increasingly visible, two points emerge: firstly, this category of workers is no more homogenous than any other, and secondly, progressive gains can only be made with persistent and focused political activism. To the first point, John Blandford argues that although sexual orientation has significant influence on income, its submergence within categories of married or non-married serves to distort analyses of causes, and therefore the framing of political campaigns to achieve pay equity.¹ Likewise, American research on heterosexism in the workplace has found that studies on the impact of race and gender in the workplace that ignore sexual orientation tend to underestimate or misconstrue the effects of multiple identities on workers themselves, as well as on the value of anti-discrimination policies.²

The second point about the necessity for political activism by and for LGBT workers recognizes that, overall, little attention has been paid to issues of sexuality in the politics or research literature of trade union movements, and still less has been paid to the hegemonic or homophobic dimensions of such movements. The general silence on issues of sexuality among union activists stands in strong contrast with the clearly articulated view that the male dominance of the labor movement can no longer be ignored or overlooked, including issues of union leadership and sexual harassment.³ Considerable uncertainty and timidity remains about LGBT issues in the labor movement at both local and international levels.

Queer organizing is strongest in unions where other marginalized workers have carved out self-organizing spaces, where union feminism is active, and where there are large numbers of women.⁴ Examples of women’s self-organizing include women’s conferences, caucuses, committees, forums, workshops, special educational programs, and websites. The rationale for creating separate forms of organizing is predicated on the minority status of women in a male-dominated union and in their experiences of sexual harassment and sex discrimination on the job. These separate spaces can serve as staging areas for broader forms of organizational and movement participation. As Katzenstein (1998) makes clear: “For protest to occur inside institutions there must be protected spaces or habitats where activists can meet, share experiences, receive affirmation, and strategize for change.”⁵ Although these spaces are clearly defined and defendable by activists, their boundaries are not necessarily permanent or fixed. For women, self-organizing in unions provides the political space to construct union feminism. According to Curtin (1999), “separate spaces provide the opportunity for women to alter the discursive frameworks through which women’s claims are constituted.”⁶ These spaces serve as mobilizing structures and are not ends in themselves.

Similar self-organizing internal support structures and policies have been developed by LGBT union members despite resistance from some union officials and members. LGBT labor activists have mounted campaigns on explicit issues around sexuality such as protection from homophobia in the workplace and collective bargaining for domestic partner benefits since the early 1970s. The first Australian Gay and Lesbian Trade Unionists Group (GayTUG) was formed in 1978. Twenty years later, GLAM (Gay and Lesbian Australian Services Union Members) was established to articulate their issues to the broad labor movement as well as within their union. In Canada, similar self-organizing by networks of lesbians and gay men established internal structures such as The National Pink Triangle Committee of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in 1991. In 1997, the Canadian Labor Council organized its first national conference for gay and lesbian unionists, attended by about 300 people,⁷ and in 1999, the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) added transgender issues to its bargaining agenda.⁸ The first public endorsement of LGBT rights by an American labor union was in 1970, when the executive council of the American Federation of Teachers passed a resolution denouncing discrimination against teachers solely on the basis of homosexuality. In 1983, the American peak body, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), formally condemned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Around the same time, gay and lesbian unionists for equality formed GLUE in Wellington, New Zealand to gain union recognition of the need to promote and protect the interests of lesbian and gay workers. In 2000, the New Zealand Council of Trade Union’s network, CTU Out@Work, was established for lesbian, gay, takataapui, bisexual, intersex, transgender and fa’afafine union members.⁹

It is notable that these campaigns have advanced through the kinds of alliances with broader social movements that we have identified as critical to a new feminist politics. As McCreery and Krupat have argued, “the challenge for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered movements to confront elitism and inequalities in their own ranks, is to acknowledge common cause with other social movements, and to wage their struggles at the intersections of class, race, and gender.”¹⁰ Such alliances have fueled internal campaigns by feminist and LGBT activists to push unions to address the issues and workers’ concerns. In 1981, for example, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of LGBT community activists, organized a gay contingent to participate in the Australian May Day parade, the annual celebration of workers’ rights—despite the fact that “it was not well received by some in the union hierarchy.”¹¹ Over the last decade, unions have participated in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras march through the heart of the city, which attracts enormous crowds and live television coverage. Although the march is a major annual expression of the LGBT movement, union involvement is not without serious internal conflicts that have even resulted some union officials threatening to resign. Robyn Fortescue argues that the significance of events like Mardi Gras are not just about what happens on the night of the march; rather, their impact derives from the organization, debates and material support that must be negotiated within the labor movement beforehand. She argues that such an alliance makes Mardi Gras “the biggest labor festival of the year.”¹²

1. John Blandford, “The Nexus of Sexual Orientation and Gender in the Determination of Earnings.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 56 (2003): 622-642. [↩]
2. Ragins, B. R., Cornwell, J. M., Belle Rose Ragins, John M. Cornwell, & Janice Miller, “Heterosexism in the workplace.” Group and Organization Management, 28 (2003): 1: 45-74. [↩]
3. Sheila Cunnison, & Jane Stageman, Feminizing the Unions: Challenging the Culture of Masculinity. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995; Sue Ledwith, “The Future as Female? Gender, Diversity and Global Labor Solidarity.” The Future of Organised Labor. Ed. C. Phelan. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006: 91. [↩]
4. Monica L. Bielski, Identity at Work: U.S. Labor Union Efforts to Address Sexual Diversity through Policy and Practice (Rutgers, Dissertation 2005); Hunt G. & M. Bielski Boris, “The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender challenge to American labor.” The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor. Ed. D.S. Cobble. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007: 81-99; Mary Margaret Fonow, Union women: forging feminism in the United Steelworks of America. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003. [↩]
5. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Faithful and Fearless: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999: 33. [↩]
6. Jennifer Curtin, Women and Trade Unions: A Comparative Perspective. Sydney: Ashgate, 1999: 33. [↩]
7. Genge, Sue, “Solidarity and Pride.” Canadian Women’s Studies 18: 1 (1998): 97-99. [↩]
8. Gerald Hunt, & Judy Haiven, “Building Democracy for Women and Sexual Minorities: Union Embrace of Diversity.” Relations industrielles, 61: 4: 666-682. [↩]
9. Fa’afafine is a Samoan term that literally means to be like a woman, and Takataapui is a Maori term to describe intimate friends of the same sex. [↩]
10. Patrick McCreery, & Kitty Krupat, Introduction. “Out front: Lesbians, gays, and the struggle for workplace rights.” Social Text, 17: 4 (1999): 1-8, 5. [↩]
11. Neale Towart, “Mardi Gras: The Biggest Labor Festival?” Workers Online (2002). [↩]
12. Robin Fortescue, “Mardi Gras: The biggest labor festival of the year.” Hecate, 262 (2000): 62-65, 64. [↩]