LGBTQ workers are at the forefront of Chicago’s labor resurgence. ‘You have to learn to stick up for yourself.’
“If you grew up queer somewhere that it’s not accepted, you have to learn to stick up for yourself,” Parshall said. “That’s true for a lot of my queer co-workers. There’s just more of a willingness to speak up for yourself and defend yourself, and you know, advocate for changes if you’re working under unfair conditions.”
“People who are in the queer community are very comfortable in organizing spaces,” said Tat Scott, 28, who works as an internship coordinator at the School of the Art Institute,“We’re used to advocating for ourselves, advocating for each other — in this case for our colleagues,” said Scott, who is bisexual and a member of the bargaining committee for school staff, which is in negotiations with school management over their first union contract.
Chicago’s union coffeehouses now include cafes run by Intelligentsia Coffee and Colectivo Coffee, where baristas are represented by the IBEW, and La Colombe, where staff are unionized with the United Food and Commercial Workers. Searl said their store manager looked out for queer baristas — he would stand up for employees when they were misgendered by customers, for instance, and was supportive when Searl changed their name.That changed, Searl said, after baristas at the cafe filed for a union election early last year.
Searl says their manager told them that if they unionized, they might lose access to those benefits as well as tuition reimbursement they used to attend Arizona State University for free, another Starbucks benefit. “All partners enrolled in Starbucks health benefits have access to industry-leading gender-affirming care benefits regardless of organizing activity or representation status,” Trull said, adding that company policies “strictly prohibit any retaliatory or threatening behavior directed toward partners who are interested in a union,” including the making of threats or promises.
Howard Brown workers raised concerns about what they described as understaffing and high turnover at the organization that affects patient care.Olivia Prager, who works with patients with HIV and AIDS at Howard Brown, said that since unionizing, staff have gained the ability to push back against changes they disagree with at work. “In the past, we just had no protection,” said Prager, who is a member of the staff bargaining committee.
O’Kelley said there was “very much a robust effort” to address security concerns related to such threats, pointing to actions the clinic has taken such as taking down the photographs of providers of gender-affirming care from its website, as well as more stringent security in place at clinics that offer such services, especially those that serve minors.
And though unions have not always prioritized LGBTQ issues, the gay labor movement stretches back decades, said Gerry Scoppettuolo, an instructor of labor and U.S. history at Cambridge College in Boston.
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