With this essay, I issue a challenge to LGBT Americans across the country regarding one of the most important priorities for our community at this moment: the urgent need to contribute our voices, our efforts and our resources to the existential struggle that the labor movement is currently waging against the Republican forces seeking to cripple the right of workers to collectively bargain and roll back workplace protections. I believe that our national organizations need to be putting feet on the streets and money on the table to support labor. I believe that we, as individuals, need to show up to support and defend workers. I do not suggest that this work should happen to the exclusion of our continued advocacy on traditional LGBT issues, but I do suggest that it should be a major commitment of the LGBT community right now, not just a symbolic statement of support. I urge this course of action for three basic reasons.
First, labor rights is an LGBT issue. As Gary Gates and others have long since demonstrated, LGBT Americans come from the same economic and demographic origins as all Americans. That means that 65-70% of LGBT Americans have no college degree. The median household income for LGBT Americans ranges from about $35,000 per year in the poorest states to about $65,000 in the richest. Huge numbers of LGBT Americans have either no health insurance or inadequate health insurance. If anything, these economic challenges are even more acute for LGBT workers, who enjoy no federal protection from workplace discrimination and no protection under the laws of many states, no access to equal health benefits in most companies, no access to equal treatment for their families under the laws of most states, and unequal treatment for their relationships under federal law. Working-class LGBT people tend to be less socially visible in our civil rights efforts, just as working-class people tend to be less socially visible in American public life as a general matter, but a large majority of LGBT people are directly at risk from the Republican assault upon workers.
Second, labor unions have been showing up for years on the issue of LGBT equality. As one illustration among many, look through the "AFSCME Pride" section of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees website, which reiterates AFSCME's commitment to LGBT equality and offers a clearinghouse of online resources and a link to a sign-up sheet for the AFSCME Pride network. Showing up to help labor in their current struggle is not an act of altruism, it is the satisfaction of a reciprocal obligation.
Third, this urgent fight over the future of labor and workers' rights is where the energy in American politics is today. The attempt by the Republican party to overreach following last November's elections and cripple the ability of workers to organize -- and, incredibly, to roll back protections like child labor laws, as in Maine, where Republicans are seeking to create a rotating, vulnerable and underpaid workforce that will further disempower low-wage household earners -- has generated a backlash unlike anything we have seen in half a century. Liberal and progressive forces have an opportunity to use this fight to reclaim the political agenda in America and to reframe the political narrative. LGBT advocates and the LGBT community need to be a part of this urgently important moment. We need to be visibly showing up and contributing our efforts, so that our allies in labor, in state legislatures, and in political parties and organizing committees around the country will know that we were there when it mattered. And, in putting skin in the game, we will be able to play a part in defining the agenda and narrative that will emerge from this reawakening of the American worker.
Pushing back against the current assault on American workers should be one of the highest priorities of the LGBT community today -- fully on a par with the effort to secure employment discrimination protections or relationship rights. And all of us as individuals should start looking actively and creatively at how we can contribute to this fight. I, for one, am setting myself that task starting right now.
Kyle Knight and Todd Sears: Out in the Workplace? Some U.S. Industries Are Setting an Example
Total taxes on imports are essentially zero, far below the taxes that are collected on domestic production. And taxes on exports are greater than zero, because income form exports is treated the same as income from any domestic source. The difference of tax rates forces competing corporations to move their production outside the US. Production of both goods and services can be moved, and have been moved.
We cannot cut all domestic tax rates to zero, so there is no way to restore competitive balance by cutting taxes. The right move is to tax imports at least as highly as we tax domestic production (for both goods and services), and to eliminate taxes on income received from exports. That would create new incentive to employ people in the US, and it would restore balance to the system.
"Nearly 50 national organizations for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have signed a labor solidarity statement sponsored by the AFL-CIO constituency group Pride at Work. The statement supports the rights of public employees to bargain.
The statement says, in part:
As national, state and local organizations for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality, we stand in solidarity with teachers, firefighters, nurses and all workers across this country fighting for their basic rights—for all of our rights. We are one."
"We need to be visibly showing up and contributing our efforts, so that our allies in labor, in state legislatures, and in political parties and organizing committees around the country will know that we were there when it mattered."
In other words, gay Americans, do good stuff so you'll be more liked and will win more people over.
No.
We should do what is RIGHT, not because it's a means of advancing our own agenda, but because it's the right thing to do.
This gay American has already taken steps to support labor and when he's done so he's done so not as a gay American but as an American.
What is right is often not easy, what is easy is often not right. Pick what is right.
I am tired of being labeled as gay as if that were my only important feature. I am a Harvard educated educator, working to open his own school, actor who dabbles in tech, big brother, and hard worker who happens to love a man not a woman.
Being gay is NOT my number one identifying factor. To call on my as a gay American assumes that, and it is frankly insulting.
I am 100% behind the labor and unions, as well as 100% behind the LGBT rights movement. Both because I am someone who works for a living and I can see the support unions have given to every worker, and because it is the right thing. I am for equal rights for all, both because I am struggling for my rights, but also because it is the right thing to do.
Fight on fellow human. Fight on!
Indeed.
Where's your local paper? Midwest?
And what is your current or future involvement with the Obama 2012 campaign? Frankly, I think that this essay has some other intended political purpose.
And of all people doling out advice to us it's Mr. "Fierce Advocate" Obama's chief advisor on LGBT issues?
Mr. Wolff, how about giving us the benefit of the doubt, and then going back to your boss with some advice for HIM: Be the fierce advocate you said you would be.
Despite DADT repeal underway, some of us are well aware that the December repeal effort was a desperate last minute attempt to save some of the Democrat's base and to prevent a mass exodus from the party. This wasn't about principle. This was about politics.
It was about self-gain, not about gaining rights for gay people. It was about what was best for the Democrats.
So, having said that, I find it rather telling that Mr. Wolff advises the gay community to do good deeds that help others...so that they themselves reap a reward.
Sorry, I'm not buying.
I'm supporting union laborers because I believe in supporting them, not because I have an alterior motive.
Practical elements to this piece, yes, but offensive overall.
While there are many great reasons to support labor, the most compelling is that a strong labor movement has always meant a strong LGBT ally. With our community on the edge of cultural and legal gains, we need strong allies, particularly now.
This gay men will continue to support labor and I thank them for their support.
I am sure there are a number of people who would prefer us not to show up--or even exist, but we will and we do. They can just get over it.