➤ WORKERS, from p.4
A study released this past fall
from the UCLA Labor Center found
that among more than 1,000 members
of the United Food and Commercial
Workers (UFCW) surveyed,
a third of whom identifi ed as LGBTQ,
there was very strong support
— as high as 87 percent — for
workplace protections and benefi ts
for queer employees.
A 2018 commentary in The Advocate
from Richard Trumka,
president of the AFL-CIO, recounted
how as president of the United
Mine Workers in the 1980s he
oversaw some of the fi rst negotiated
same-sex couple benefi ts in
the nation.
Though comprehensive data on
what industries LGBTQ people
work in does not exist, Davis pointed
to 2018 fi ndings that the Human
Rights Campaign drew from
a University of Chicago research
institute indicating that 40 percent
of the community works in fi ve industries
where union organizing
has either achieved big wins or is
being aggressively pursued: restaurants
and food services (15 percent);
hospitals (7.5 percent); K-12
education (seven percent); colleges
and universities (7 percent); and
retail (4 percent). Only 22 percent
of the general population are employed
in these same industries.
Educational workers have an especially
high rate of unionization,
Davis said, while the food service
industry is a target of both UFCW
and RWDSU organizing; retail is
also an RWDSU target; and hospitals
are a focus of SEIU efforts.
Davis pegged the number of
unionized LGBTQ workers in the
US somewhere between half a million
and a million in total.
A separate study taken from a
different perspective published by
the London School of Economics
Business Review showed that gay
men were overrepresented compared
to men generally as fl ight
attendants, hairstylists, nurse
practitioners, actors, news media
professionals, and artists, while
lesbians were overrepresented
compared to women generally as
psychologists, probation offi cers,
social service managers, and mechanics
and installers for automotive
products, elevators, heating
and cooling devices, and home appliances.
Employees at Housing Works succeeded after a lengthy battle to organize under the Retail, Wholesale
and Department Store Union.
Both Davis and RWDSU’s Appelbaum
emphasized that the
key priority they see for American
workers today is safety during the
pandemic, with each emphasizing
the urgent need to enact Biden’s
COVID relief package.
“Right now, we have to see that
people get taken care of,” Davis
said.
Appelbaum talked about RWDSU’s
work over the past year in
highlighting the dangers of work
in poultry plants, which are concentrated
in the South.
“In many ways, these are the
new plantations,” he said, noting
that many workers in such plants
were told initially that protective
gear was not needed on the
production line. PPE, Appelbaum
said, might be provided to supervisors,
many of them white, while
the workers themselves, largely
African-American, went without.
Some plants, he added, hung Saran
Wrap between workers rather
than using plexiglass.
MATT TRACY
“We embarrassed the employers
to treat workers better,” Appelbaum
said.
The focus on COVID relief is also
apparent in the Biden administration’s
early dialogue with organized
labor. On February 17, the president
met with 10 labor leaders,
and the White House readout of
the gathering stated that its focus
was on the COVID package, known
formally as the American Rescue
Plan, as well as an infrastructure
initiative to “create millions of jobs
in R&D, manufacturing, and clean
energy.” The unions represented
were all from the industrial sector,
such as engineers, iron workers,
aerospace workers, and a variety
of building trades. Service workers
unions, where much of the growth
in organized labor membership is
happening, were not present.
Unmentioned in the White House
readout was any discussion of the
Protecting the Right to Organize
(PRO) Act, a measure that bundles
many of the initiatives endorsed
by Biden’s campaign to strengthen
the ability of workers to organize
for collective bargaining rights,
penalize companies that retaliate
against such labor activism, and
weaken the right to work laws that
exist in 27 states. Signifi cantly, the
measure would also crack down
on corporate policies that classify
workers as independent contractors
rather than employees eligible
to join union organizing units —
provisions that could deliver relief
to gig economy workers currently
under the unfettered sway of unresponsive
ownership.
These are all steps that Biden
has endorsed, and the Democraticcontrolled
House passed the PRO
Act last February in a 224-194
vote, largely though not exclusively
along party lines. Lamar Alexander,
the former Tennessee Republican
senator who then chaired the
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee, refused to give
the measure a Senate hearing.
Washington State Democrat Patty
Murray, who is the lead sponsor
on the measure in her chamber,
now chairs that committee, but
Gay City News’ calls into her offi ce
and into the committee were not
returned.
Pride at Work’s Davis, RWDSU’s
Appelbaum, and Gene Carroll,
co-director of the New York State
AFL-CIO/Cornell University Union
Leadership Institute agree that the
PRO Act is a crucial piece of legislation
to push through Congress
while Democrats are in charge.
Speaking to its importance, Appelbaum
observed, “The policy
in this country is supposed to be
pro-collective bargaining, and has
been that way since the New Deal,
but that is not happening.” What’s
critical, he said, is the pushback
against right to work laws in more
than half the states.
In Davis’ view, the PRO Act
would make a “material change” in
the balance between management
and labor in the nation.
Carroll pointed with particular
concern to the attack on public
sector employees fi rst launched
by Scott Walker in Wisconsin and
copied elsewhere.
“Public sector workers became
the bogey man,” he said, “their jobs
seen as sinecures” with generous
benefi ts and little accountability
➤ WORKERS, continued on p.15
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