Out And Organized

Our members do vital work in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community.

“I was raised in a union household. I’ve volunteered for the United Farm Workers. I always went to union meetings,” says delegate Mark Dean, a retention care coordinator with the Washington, D.C. area’s Whitman Walker Clinics. “It’s shown me that when things aren’t fair we need to stand up for ourselves.”

Whitman Walker Clinic delegate Shiloh Stark

Whitman Walker’s Mark Dean

“I’m so glad I wound up in health care. It’s just so basic – teaching people about their bodies,” says delegate Shiloh Stark, a program specialist in Whitman Walker’s lesbian services program. “There’s a feeling among the LGBT community of being disconnected from health care. We create an open door.”

Stark says that feeling disconnected is not uncommon for LGBT workers.

“Similar to being the only person of color or the only disabled person, if you’re the only LGBT person [at work] it’s hard to stick up for yourself if you don’t know how you’ll be received,” says Stark, who last year began female to male transgender transition.

“Labor leaders have to speak out on LGBT issues and start reaching out,” says delegate Artie Bray, a capacity building associate with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C. “We have to make sure our delegates are educated on LGBT issues.”

Speaking out on LGBT issues is about social justice and dollars and cents, says Dean, who with his partner shares a home in the D.C. area.

“Everyone’s framing things like domestic partnership and gay marriage as moral issues,” says Dean. “But the reality is if my partner died I would have to sell our condo because of the tax burden. We’ve been silent in the labor movement too long. We don’t speak up enough on things like domestic partnership and access to health care.”

SEIU, through its Lavender Caucus, has worked to facilitate open communication between the LGBT community and the rest of the labor movement. At the union’s last convention in 2004, members overwhelmingly passed a Marriage Equity Resolution. The resolution supports civil marriage for samesex couples and rejects any political candidate who attempts to negatively politicize LGBT issues to win votes.

“We in the LGBT community have been ready, willing and able to advocate for people,” says Bray. “I’d like to see more education in the labor movement on worker protections specifically around sexual orientation and gender identity.”

There is some progress. Whitman Walker’s negotiating committee is the first to win groundbreaking health care coverage provisions for transgender surgery and healthcare.

“I’d like to see it become the subject of more conversations and take a look at contracts through that lens,” says Stark, a negotiating committee member. “It all starts with dialogue. People should know that it’s not going to alienate them from the union to talk about these things.”