For many LGBT folks, unions don’t automatically conjure up a bastion of inclusion. Too often, say “union worker” and one thinks of the blue-collar worker without a college degree who might be a Democrat, but isn’t backing same-sex marriage any time soon.
But that image is slowly changing. In May, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Stuart Applebaum, came out publicly; he is the first head of an international union to do so.
After coming out, Applebaum began publicly backing same-sex marriage in New York, where the 100,000-member RWDSU is based, and said that marriage equality spurred his revelation. As he told Gay City News, “How can I see justice and full acceptance denied to the LGBT community, which I am a part of, and do nothing?”
In New York, a marriage-equality bill passed the Assembly in May and is awaiting Senate action, likely when the houses reconvene in the fall.
While Applebaum might be the highest-ranking labor leader to come out, he isn’t the first.
Other out labor leaders include Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Nancy Wohlforth, secretary-treasurer of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, vice president and Executive Council member of the AFL-CIO and co-president of Pride at Work, an organization of LGBT union members.
Pride at Work, now in its 10th year, has focused on fostering mutual support between organized labor and the LGBT community, opposing discrimination based on “sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, religion or political views.”
For the unions, one of the effective ways they can fight for LGBT rights is to include spousal benefits — without distinctions between same- and opposite-sex couples — in negotiations and union contracts.
Considering that denying benefits is often one of the ways companies try to circumvent state and local antidiscrimination laws, gaining union backing on this point is significant. Gaining union backing on nondiscrimination laws and same-sex marriage — and out union leaders — is even better.