Get Used to It: Ep. 56, "Labor & Gay Rights"

(typewriter clacking) (upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Sheila Kuehl. Welcome to "Get Used To It" a show about not necessarily only for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered community here in America and overseas for all we know, because I think our tapes are being bootlegged and we're really happy to hear that. Today, the show is about our gay, lesbian community and its relationship such as it is, or has been with the labor movement. As you'll hear from some of the guests, we think there's a kind of a resurgence in the labor movement in America. And certainly this is the most out and prominent our community's ever been and there are some interesting intersections. And I have three great guests today. First, KipuKai Kauli'i, who is the National Co-Vice Chair of Pride At Work, which is a constituency group inside the AFL-CIO, representing the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered community. And he was up until recently, president of the local AFSCME chapter here in our city of West Hollywood. Next to him is John Perez who is the Executive Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council. And before that was an international organizer for the Payers Union. Welcome John, Welcome KipuKai. And our third guest Torie Osborne, who's been on this show with us before. Torie, welcome back. Torie is now the Executive Director of the Liberty Hill Foundation in Santa Monica, a very progressive foundation, funding very progressive good community organizing work. Early on in her career, I don't know if many people know this, and we didn't even talk about this when we were doing our one-on-one show tour, Torie was a labor organizer for AFSCME and for American Federation of Teachers. And as many of you probably know, she was the Executive Director of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center and the Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. So now we've got all of our titles flying and our credentials in place, (laughs) so welcome to all of you. I'm really glad you're here. KipuKai I wanna start with you. Well, let me change that. John, let me start with you. You are out in your workplace, but not necessarily involved in the work of organizing gay people in the labor movement, sort of the other side of it, I guess, as we would say, you know, a rising star in the labor movement and a couple of unions. What is that like? And how do you see that world being kind of for our community? - Well, I think it's really evolving over time and I think that the labor movement is much more accepting of the diversity within its membership than it was years ago. As you referenced, there's really a resurgence, a re-energizing of the labor movement. And as we've moved towards this new level of energy in the labor community, we've also embraced the diversity of memberships. So I've actually had a pretty decent run of things, and that's not what people would expect, especially when I represented construction unions. - Well construction unions always seem to me to be like the worst. I mean, certainly for women, apologies to who our members in the construction unions at the moment, but I mean, it's kind of a different world in the trades. - It speaks to the diversity of the labor movement itself. I think the level of acceptance varies with a type of industry that you're in within the labor movement. So that public sector unions are probably the most embracing of their diversity, construction unions are having the most difficult time of accepting this change in in the diversity of their membership, and then private sector unions like mine, are somewhere in the middle. - Well, it's funny thing, when you talk about change in the diversity of membership, I mean, it always felt like the unions were kind of a closed thing, certainly to women. And I guess there were probably a lot of gay men already in the unions and simply in the closet. It was kind of an entirely different thing. What do you think has been happening that, that the movement itself is changing? I mean it's very much the same about color. - Right. - I mean as a Latino gay man, must be a very interesting sort of trajectory for you. - It is, I'm younger than all my staff too, so that also creates, you know, different sets of dynamics. But in the last four years in particular, you've seen a change in the leadership of the AFL-CIO at the national level, of the AFL-CIO at the state level, of the Building Trades Council at the state level, and then also in the LA county area, you've seen a change in leadership. So as you've seen this change in leadership, the experience of some of these new leaders in the labor movement is very different than the experience of some of their predecessors, and they've been involved to greater extent in community-based organizing, in constituency based organizing as well, in addition to traditional labor organizing. So as a result of that, there's a little more acceptance and value of the real diversity of our membership, and to a lesser extent, a change in terms of the leadership and the composition of the leadership. - Well it's really been kind of a lifesaver too. I mean, for a long time, the unions were losing members, losing members, losing members seemed to be more countries, more conservative, didn't see the need for it. Had to look around and see where were these new workers gonna come from, I guess. - And it wasn't so much that we were losing members as much as we weren't keeping up with the growing workforce. So we weren't representing the same percentage of workers as we had previously. And there were some changes in labor laws that made it much more difficult for us to organize, and so that was a structural impediment, and we figured out new and aggressive ways to get around some of those structural impediments to do new types of organizing. I think then as you see the workforce in California change, both in terms of the diversity of the workforce, as well as the change in the industries, then you see a change in our structure as well. - What's your own personal history? Where, how did you get involved in the labor movement? - Purely by accident. I became friends with the head of the Painters Union at the time, and he was dealing with large strike in his industry. And through our friendship, I kicked around some ideas of what he might wanna do in the strike and I ended up coming in and help running the strike. And at the end of the strike, I was ready to go back on my way, and the international president of that union invited me to do organizing for them across the country and do organizing training. So I did that and dabbled in their political stuff. And as I was ready to transition out the United Food and Commercial Workers, which the largest private sector union in the country was restructuring its operations here in California and asked me to come and take over their state's council. - And were you out when this very first sort of entree happened? - I wasn't out at the time that I got the first job at the painters union. I was out after I got there and during the time I worked there, and definitely I was out when the United Food and Commercial Workers asked me to come over and take over the state's council. - What was that like for you? - It was actually very easy because the people I worked with and it was, at the Painters Union, I came out over a period of time. So people knew me as a person, it wasn't just-- - One painter at a time. (Sheila and John laugh) - Actually, they represented decorators too. - Oh yeah. - And somebody said well-- - It was a little easier. - The decorators were on my side. (Sheila laughs) - So was there, so if your experience was not that difficult, do you, I mean, I can't imagine, maybe my imagination is wrong, but the labor movement would not seem to me to be the most welcoming place. And I heard what you said about segments of it. Maybe I'm only imagining the trades, but... - I think the trades get a bad rap and part of it's because the nature of the workforce in the trades is that you don't have the same level of job security that you do in public sector employment and even in other parts of private sector employment. And the union represents you on a day to day basis on the job, but you still have to compete with other members of the union for the job. So there's a different kind of dynamic in terms of membership there. But in terms of, you know, the folks who actually run the unions on a day to day basis, very accepting. There's, but as you change the dynamics of the membership, people have struggles over power and wanting to make sure they maintain power so that you have the same types of power dynamics inside of labor organization as you'd have inside of any other organization. - So are there other people in various other unions who are out? - There are a lot of representatives, business representatives, business agents, and line organizers who are out. There aren't a whole lot of heads of unions that are out, and I don't know how many there are that are closeted, but it's definitely an area where we need to do some work in. And obviously in the area in terms of women in leadership roles, we need to do some work. - So do you think this will be a growing strength for the movement? - I think it's absolutely a growing strength and it's one that the new leadership is realizing. And as we change the way we organize our unions after people are already members, then I think we're much more welcoming and inclusive than we had been in the past. But there's a lot of ground still to cover. I mean by no means is it an ideal situation yet, just like it's not an ideal situation in any other workplace. We'll talk to KipuKai in a minute about the sort of organizing of the community within the union, but to some extent, you and I have chosen kind of the same role, which is to be a gay person in a larger context in which you're called upon to do a lot of different kinds of things. Is there any way, I don't know this is sort of a hard question even to put and probably worse to answer, but is there any way that you feel that your own experience from both sides, sort of on the race issue and sexual orientation sort of helps in terms of your relationship to, you know, to working people and the concerns? 'Cause I think that unions have always seen themselves as the oppressed people in society too. - Right, and I think it really has helped. I mean, knowing that you struggle with issues in terms of how people perceive you and how they interact with you, I think helps you be more empathetic and helps you understand the situation that workers that you're trying to organize face. And so I think, and it forces you to evaluate situations differently. and kind of juggling concerns actually I think helps you be more effective in interaction, not just with your membership, but with employers. So it's not always easy, but you gain introspection and you learn from it. - But do you see some kind of glass ceiling though for us within the larger labor organizations? - I don't know that there's a glass ceiling and maybe it's because none of us have gotten to the point where we've pushed the margin of whether or not there is one. So it's yet to be seen, it's yet to be seen. - Well KipuKai what do you think then, from the sort of, I shouldn't say from the other side, but in essence it seemed to me from the description that your work was really about making certain that the, you know, the AFL-CIO, the unions within pay attention to our community, as a community, specific needs participation, et cetera. - Well, you know, basically at Pride At Work, our work is two, you know, two sided. One is to bring the labor movement and their goals to the lesbian and gay, bisexual, transgender community, but also to bring the lesbian and gay, bisexual, and transgender community into the labor movement. And in doing that, the idea is to build the alliance around organizing, around social and economic justice. I feel there's so much farther to go. I mean, there has been some level of acceptance in the labor community and things are beginning to move, but we as rank and file workers, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers have to move it from the bottom up. We have many great leaders like brother John was saying, John Sweeney, Linda Chavez Thompson, Kent Wong here, who are, you know, speaking to us and including us as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers. But the labor movement is this mass group of people who are the same as the mass group in America. I mean, there's still a lot of homophobia, you know, and I think you can only expect so much from the leadership because they're answerable, they're elected by the mass membership. So you have to move the membership from the bottom first. We've come a long way, I'm big on the union, I mean, since I was a little boy. The leadership is helping us, but there's so much work to be done from the bottom. - What exactly does Pride At Work do and how do you do it? I mean, tell me about what sort of typical week would be or whatever. - Pride At Work, the work was happening all across the country, in New York, in San Francisco, in Boston, in Los Angeles, union folks, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers were together because they weren't necessarily being included in their unions. So they were getting together and forming their own groups and saying, we're here, we're part of this union, when you're bargaining, you know, for our contracts, you're forgetting some things. You know, you're forgetting that we have, you know, issues, rights that we want as well, that we are entitled to, you know, equity benefits, domestic partnership benefits obviously, and discrimination issues in the workplace. We want a safe workplace and things like that. So for 10, 20 years, people have been working on that. Pride At Work only formally organized as a coalition of these groups that already exist around the work that they were already doing in '94, in New York. In August of '97, just last summer, after all this work, the AFL-CIO finally, you know, opened it up and said, okay, Pride At Work can become a constituency group of the AFL-CIO. So I mean, it's a beginning, but the work that we have to do is still another 10, 20 years in the making. And it'll still require a much greater level of acceptance and support and leadership from the labor movement. - I don't think most people know how a labor union sort of functions. I mean, I think people know there are members and then they think the labor has negotiators or something that talks to an employer or an industry, but I don't think they know how it functions. So how would Pride At Work function? I mean, what would be the actual things that Pride At Work would do, meet with union leaders, but would they have anything to do with sort of the larger work of the union? - You know, I think we're still trying to figure that out ourselves and get some specific plans of a action in place and become sort of a referral source I mean a resource center where, like I work for the city of West Hollywood. You know, we never had to really fight for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers because it's the city of West Hollywood. But Pride At Work now can, you know, share the contract language. And I mean even as basic as pushing union wide from local to local, from workplace to workplace, pushing non-discrimination policy or contract language, that includes sexual orientation and gender identity. I mean, most people are okay or a lot of places in the union are fine, sexual orientation in their minds are included, but in many places it's still not in writing and not in the contract. And I think, you know, if we want to move that level of acceptance amongst union members, we obviously need more workers to come out. And sometimes the only way they'll come out is when they see that they're already included. And so it might be as basic as, you know, evaluating all the contracts, seeing what's out there and making sure that the labor movement and the leaders get behind what they're saying, by putting it in the language, you know. Having sexual orientation in the nondiscrimination policies in every single one, not just in the national AFL-CIO or some of the international unions. - So in your work nationally, I mean, you said, well, it was pretty easy for me, I mean, I'm here in west Hollywood. - Yeah. - So but have you heard stories from other people about sort of difficulties that they're having with their own particular, I don't know, locals or... - There's difficulties everywhere, I mean, I suppose. The film "Out at Work" talks about discrimination in the workplace and how it's necessary to, you know, build the support, you know, not only from the union, but from the community as well. Specifically, I see things like last August, just in August, I was home, at home in Hawaii for the AFSCME convention for one week. And, you know, I went there with high hopes thinking, you know, AFSCME's cool, AFSCME's big on supporting lesbian and gay workers. And it just was as accepting and progressive as I expected it to be. And I think that, you know, there's that thing about you can push it, but don't push too hard and don't try to go too far, be patient, you know. I don't know, there's just still so much to do. - But it would seem that with, I mean, I'm also very pro-union and pro-labor, and it would seem like without organizing within the union, what do gay and lesbian workers do? I mean, I guess they organize at one workplace and or one corporation. It would seem to be more of an advantage, and maybe I guess this is sort of backwards, but would be a reason to make certain that you were part of organized labor because there is such a thing that would, you know, be at like a home, kinda home base or homepage or whatever for gay and lesbian workers. - See and it's true, like what John was saying in the union movement, there are many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender leaders already there already doing the work of the labor movement. But they're not necessarily at the same time doing the work of our community, you know, and they're not necessarily addressing our issues. I mean, in many cases, it's their job and priorities, you know, it's about priorities. We may not have a high priority as far as the leadership goes, you know. And that's why I think, and it's understandable that we don't to a certain degree, because we're a minority, you know, and because we may not have necessarily moved the people on the bottom, you know, the masses, to push the leadership to do more. - Well, it's sort of like there's often a conflict in every profession or career between not a conflict, but a difference between someone who says, oh you're a lesbian legislator or some of my, you know, colleagues in other states who would say, no I'm a legislator who just happens to be gay or lesbian, 'cause it's not, you don't wanna be a single issue focus, although organizing sometimes requires that, but you also don't wanna say, oh don't pay any attention to the fact, you know, that I'm gay. I mean, I think John's made a great sort of accommodation. 'Cause clearly, you know, out and proud, but is not just only working on those issues. - I, you know, I absolutely think of myself first as a worker and then as a gay man. And so, I mean, even through the union, I'm fighting for so many more issues for all workers, you know, but then you also have to make sure that you don't lose those workers that, you know, need the help the most, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. So I mean, and if I don't say it or push it, then who will, you know? - Well, that's the interesting question. Torie you, I mean, you're very young to have a long view on these things, but when you were very young, you were doing organizing of secretaries at college, right, and then in the Teachers Guild. And when you were at the center, I mean you were management, but it's a union shop. What do you think about sort of the history of this and the notion of, is there a way to bring these two movements together? Labor movement's been a little suspicious of us I think. Our movement, are we suspicious of them too? - Yeah, I mean, I think it's important that these movements intersect in the way as we've already talked about and have more of a significant conversation. I don't think it's a coincidence. I think there are a lot of reasons that kinda make sense, for good or for real. And I do think it's history and I think it's changing, but that the star has been rising kind of of the gay lesbian movement over the same period of time really that the labor movement has had some problems. The last 30 years, until Sweeney came in the last five years, which I think has really re-energized the labor movement as a movement, I think the trade union community in this country has had a lotta problems, not the least of which have been about staying relevant to the changing workforce, including, not limited to, gay and lesbian community, obviously the women's community, and the diversification, the changes, immigration patterns, you know, ethnic demographic shifts in the community and in the country. But I guess what what's interesting to me is in the gay and lesbian community, so at the same time, of course it's been a conservative era. So the right wing has purposefully devalued the labor movement, has purposefully pushed in general, sort of values that are not the value use of solidarity and really of honoring working people in general. I mean, if anything, we come out of 20 years of over-identification of with rich, and of a sort of glorification of the rich. And it still shocks me as an old, you know, new leftie, who came out of the '60s, when I see young, gay men and lesbians who think of and I mean even of color and even from working class backgrounds or from poor backgrounds who talk about Donald Trump as their idol, or who sort of do this over-identification with the rich. So all of these factors, not to mention the sort of middle class bias and base of much of a gay and lesbian middle class and professional, base of much of the gay and lesbian movement, and you combine that with a kind of a small business orientation. A lot of gay people who either are kicked out of their homes no matter what their own class background is, middle class, working class, poor, whatever end up starting small businesses. I mean I think about this a lot. There's this very sort of petty bourgeois, small business base, class base of the gay and lesbian movement, that's come from economic necessity. It's come from an kind of an entrepreneurism. It's come from lots of good things. I'm not putting this down at all. - But bad things too. Like you can't, you know, you're in a big office of something. I mean I see women and certainly gay and lesbian lawyers, for instance, who are so unwelcome in their firm, they leave and start something up, so there's-- - Right, so but I, right, but you combine this kind of small business base with a conservative era that has put, that has taken the mistakes of the labor movement and exaggerated them, whether it's been corruption or, you know, sort of the, you think of the, or sexism and homophobia and, you know, you had a labor movement, that's been marginalized, that's lost momentum, that's lost its place in kind of being at the engine, an engine of social change until recently mind you. I really think it is changing and I totally agree that we're in an upsurge phase. So, but at the very same time the gay movement has come into being. So, you know, sort of combine all these things with real homophobia, and if I might add as somebody who was in a position of management, in some very real ways, particularly in the positive and progressive forms of community-based organizing that have come out of the gay and lesbian community. Now, remember we are a movement, where community organizations have been part and parcel of our own movement for liberation because we're ostracized from mainstream institutions, from our families, from churches, from unions, we've created community-based organizations. So you take an organization like the Center, the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles. It becomes a union shop and in this very weird way, the traditional union structures, the adversarial worker-management kind of either or, quite old style forms, don't always work in an organization of oppressed people who even sure there's folks who make more money than others, but where there's a commonality of purpose, where what you are trying to build is a community across various lines in the hierarchy. And there's some interesting contradictions that come up. And I, as somebody who in a pro-union family, grew up pro-union, had worked with the unions for a couple a years in my early 20s and strongly wouldn't cross a picket line. You know, you couldn't ever, ever, I mean, I just wouldn't do it. It's immoral, you know, I mean, I'm strongly pro-union. But I'll tell you something, I learned about some of the ways that the labor movement is going to have to, and I think it's changing now, but is gonna have to be open to some new forms of organizing and thinking in organizations that are alternative organizations. This is not a factory in the south, you know? And so, but, so that's really a minor point in the grand scheme of things. But the main point here is that on a going forward basis, first of all, you have a labor movement that is having to respond to shifts in its own, if it's gonna grow, it's either gonna remain 14% of the population or it's gonna grow. And it's gonna need to grow to have more clout and to have more relevance, and to make the difference in more people's lives. So it's got, it is changing under Sweeney's leadership. And I think this, you know, these guys know a lot more about it than I do, but I certainly see a resurgence of focus on organizing, a resurgence of diversity, ethnic diversity, responsiveness to women, and women's leadership, and certainly this Pride At Work and the openness of folks like John in the leadership of the labor movement, these are all good signs, that homophobia is beginning to be tackled within the labor movement. Now from the gay and lesbian point of view, from the gay and lesbian movement point of view, there's two points here, and one I alluded to earlier. For the gay and lesbian movement to remain relevant on a going forward, you know, basis, it is gonna have to deal with its own classism. It is gonna have to deal with this sort of sucking up to corporations. With all due respect, the private sector has been in the forefront on domestic partnership benefits. Professionals, a lot of the workplace organizing that's been done by professionals in the entertainment industry and high tech industries that have gotten domestic partnership and anti-discrimination laws has been wonderful. There are some ways that the private corporate sector has really shown up government on the issue, on the gay and lesbian issue over the last 10 or 15 years. And I wanna pay total honor to those, to those businesses that have been progressive in that way. But the reality is that that they've done it for, the reason that they haven't wanted to lose the participation and the full participation of important workers. Now, those workers probably wouldn't call themselves workers. In fact, probably given the anti-labor movement bias both of the gay movement and of these conservative times, they would go as far away from using that word as possible. When I was a kid, you know, in my teens and 20s, in a sort of left wing era, we're now in a right wing era, in a left wing, progressive era where people, were values of solidarity across class lines were wanting to help with economic equity and democracy. We used different language then. You wanted to identify with people who were workers: the National Lawyers Guild, doctors were getting organized. Teachers got organized during this era. You had a sense of solidarity across lines. Professionals didn't wanna be. I mean, if you had a social conscious, you didn't wanna be isolated from people who were working people. This is an era where people who are working class call themselves upper middle class, where people are constantly idolizing the rich and wanting to be, you know, this upward mobility is where people are at. - Well, it was an interesting. - And I think it's a problem. - Well, it became a problem too. I mean, it's an interesting dichotomy because our community, as you've very accurately said, is also kind of over identifying and also we're seen as a very privileged community, which makes those of us who are not, invisible, sort of in the movement. - Right. - But we are not the only ones. I remember a labor rally at the Capital, when 2000 hard hats showed up to protest the fact that Governor Wilson was not in favor of the prevailing wage, preserving the eight hour day, et cetera. And I asked them, how many of you voted for the guy? And they were embarrassed. Because the labor movement had gotten very comfortable, little conservative in its politics, and wasn't kind of remembering. I mean, I'm much older than any of you, when I was a kid no one wore jeans. Jeans were not a thing that people wore. And right about the very early '60s or maybe the late '50s, there was a conscious effort to identify with working people by wearing denim. I'm not kidding. This is how it happened. Levi's was making no money at all, except from people who worked on docks, et cetera. And everybody started wearing jeans and it was an aspect of a statement to begin with. And you're right, it kinda got lost. - It's about a time where values of, you know, democracy, equity, equality, justice. So the thing that I think is, as we look at the next millennium, if economic justice doesn't become the centerpiece of social change organizing, everybody's gonna lose out, because we've seen such a horrible inequity of, you know, wealth of economic resources in the last 30 years, the upward shift in mobility in economic wealth, you know, the 1% controlling 43% of the wealth. It's just outrageous. Every decent person should be pissed off at the lack of fairness. If economic justice doesn't come front and center, any movement is gonna be in trouble. The women's movement, the gay movement, I mean, it doesn't matter what your, the environmental movement, doesn't matter what your priority is. So, and what is at the center of economic justice is the labor movement. So the gay and lesbian community will become more and more irrelevant if it doesn't deal with issues of economic fairness, issues of economic justice. Not just because there are plenty of working people, of working class people, people who are in unions or should be in unions who happen to be gay and lesbian. Not just because of that, but because of its sense of connectedness to building a better world for everybody. - So, John, do you see that kind of awareness though, within the unions? - I think that there's definitely that kind of awareness. And I think that you have to, when you look at the labor movement, you have to ask about structural internal questions that Pride At Work and KipuKai's work in particular, really start addressing. And then you have to that deal with the external issues. So that for example, the labor movement has been really on the front lines of fighting for domestic partnership benefits for workers in a variety of sectors, in the public sector in particular, but in a variety of sectors. And then this year, for example, a great example is when the speaker had a bill that would've treated discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation, the same way as any other workplace based discrimination, there were more union officials in the room talking about the importance of it, than there were traditional representatives and leaders of the lesbian and gay community. So that there is, there's a nexus around certain sets of issues, and that's where I think we have the ability to build from. And so there's obviously tons of work to be done, but, and you and I talked about this the other day, there there's a change. This year when the California Labor Federation held its biennial convention to choose its leaders and to decide which candidates to support, and they had their banquet, there was only one entertainer and that entertainer happened to be a gay male comedian. (Sheila laughs) That's, that's a major step. And two years ago at the Democratic National Convention, when John Sweeney, the President of the National AFL-CIO got up to speak, he was the first person that evening to talk about the lesbian and gay community in terms of it being a core constituency. So there's definitely a transition, but it's not just because of the change in leadership of one person like a John Sweeney. It's really because there has been a change in terms of the overall leadership and there's tons of work to be done, but we've made some significant gains in the last several years. - So the tons of work to be done, what is that? I mean, it all sounds very rosy. I'm a little suspicious. - Well, there's a lot of work to be done in the gay and lesbian community that speaks-- - Well, let's talk about that. - I think when she talks about the, you know, the mood of the country and people are, you know, what's in it for me, they're looking out for themselves. The biggest change, the thing we have to most work on, and I think in the labor movement, there's a good movement, I mean it's happening there is creating compassion again where you're not just looking out for yourself, but you're looking out for your brother, you know. And that's what the unions are about because you know, your collective voice is raising benefits and pay for everyone, you know, and giving safe working conditions. Like last October, I went to the Organizing Institute up in Northern California with the AFL-CIO. And when those three days were over, I realized, wow, you know, this is like one of the most incredible experiences of my life, because they brought together like 30 or 40 people, young and not so young, and these were the type of people that were number one, totally compassionate and enthusiastic, and wanting to get in and find a way to do more work for others. And they taught us, you know, about union organizing. And you can see really how, if you get out in the streets and you go knock on the doors, and if you talk to people, you can make good difference. But creating the mood of the country where you move away from individualism and more into looking out for each other, that's the biggest job. And that's like so much work. (laughs) - Right, but that's not just the job of the labor movement or the gay and lesbian movement. This is a national crisis here. I mean we need a values revolution. You know, I agree with the Pat Buchanans of the world that say that we're in sort of a war for the soul of America. We are. And right now, the right wing's winning. Well the good news is they'll never represent more than 30% of the American people, but the rest of us have got to get our acts together and we do need a values revolution. We need to counteract this selfishness, individualism, greed, the only benefits the top. Really, it really only benefits the status quo and a few people who are the wealthiest and the rest of us, whether your upper middle class, middle class, working class, or poor, the poor have gotten the worst end of the stick, but 75% of Americans wages have been frozen. There is this myth that we have this rosy economy out there and 25% have benefited. I've benefited, but you know what, where is the benefit where my salary is good, but every day I see the desperation and poverty of people who are homeless or, you know, or a living wage, a living wage campaign that gets won in the city of Los Angeles after a two year struggle. A living wage is only $9 an hour. I mean, this is $15,000 a year for a family of four. And these issues, I mean, we really have to return, not because I say so, or we say so, but because when there's a sense of national purpose, undergirded by values of compassion and fairness, and I really am one of these people that believes that most Americans believe in compassion and fairness, it's just that we haven't been talking to each other enough. We haven't, not only have we not been organizing as aggressively as, you know, the labor movement or the gay and lesbian movement for that matter. The gay and lesbian movement does too little organizing in the classic sense of training young people about leadership and organizing and getting the word out. And I think that that's developmental. I mean you have to get yourself together and build your sort of base of support and then you get to go out and do more organizing, taking the message out. So, but I really think this is about a values revolution in a much broader sense, and where people start to identify with people who are different, start to look at what is in common instead of just what's in it for me. And that personal bit gain, ultimately is meaningless, unless there's a sense of social purpose. - But you feel though, this upward mobility notion that America has always sold as its good thing. I mean, when we first started out saying we're gonna be a class busting nation. That is, it's not, you're not gonna be born into this class and stuck there like you were in England. Or born into, you know, an upper class and that's gonna make it all be okay for you. And this notion that you can always change classes, we have public education, we have public universities, that kind of thing, also sometimes means you don't look down anymore. You know, you are forgetting. I mean, a lot of people, if it's every guy for himself or whatever, we're aspiring to a higher class. And those 75% who are not still doing very well, always want us to vote for tax breaks just in case they might happen to get into a higher tax bracket. It's the most amazing thing to me. And don't you think it works the same with working people? - It absolutely does. It absolutely does. There's definitely a false consciousness issue at play. But I think Torie was right when she said that we've got an identity problem within our community too, that when people think of our community, they tend to think of middle class, upper middle class, professional white men in particular. So then when you try to do the coalition work, the coalition partner that's perceived as being the representative of the gay community, doesn't really look like the overall community. - Right. But Torie, you did a interesting, well and invited me to participate, but I've been thinking about ever since, this sort of potential clash between traditional leftist politics, which has been very union identified in the old days and so called identity politics and whether or not there is a real conflict there. You talked about at an old fashioned way of looking at things, the sort of us and them management labor deal. Is there also this kind of ideological clash or even methodological clash? - Well, I see it, I mean I see, I think that everything's exactly where it should be. I take a very long view of this and I take a very evolutionary view of it. If it had not been for the women's movement, if it had not been for the gay lesbian movement, I couldn't be who I am, we all couldn't be who we are. Those brave drag Queens who heard those shoes at the cops, you know, and were building on what had come from before in the women's movement, were building on the Civil Rights Movement, the Chicano Movement. I mean, all these things had to happened. They have met however, a fragmentation that I think is outlived its usefulness. So that those of us who have spent 10 or 15 years building the gay and lesbian movement, building the women's movement needed to do that. These are good things. And there will always be a need for an autonomous women's movement, an autonomous African American movement, there will be needs for home base for people able to find their voice, to build the self-esteem. - Even a doorway. - Or a gateway, a doorway into activism through your own self-interest. Those things are important. They don't go away. It's not like you outgrow them. They continue to be the gateway. You need the gay centers, you need the women's groups and so forth. But there is a way it becomes dead end. And I think we're seeing it in the gay movement now. I frankly think we are seeing a dead end, the same way as we saw a dead end of lesbian feminism at the end of the '70s and of frankly gay, white male reform politics that was brought together because of AIDS. If the AIDS crisis that hadn't happened, man, those lesbians, I don't know if they would've been processing in those communes in Oregon forever. And those white men would've been discoing forever, those gay men and a few of them, I mean AIDS brought the communities together. Brought men and women together. Brought the people of color into the mix for the first time. It created the possibility of a vision. Yeah, it was an epidemic that is changing and in some ways it is diminishing, certainly the urgency of it. So that what, but I'm seeing that the gay movement is at a similar 10 years later, is at a similar dead end, a lack of vision, a lack of a sense of vibrancy because it's just looking at itself. And at some point, I think, unless you start linking up with other movements and other issues, and what I'm saying is that economic, the elephant in the room is economic injustice. And the labor movement is at the heart of fighting economic injustice. So we're gonna have to be working together if we're really gonna tackle the big issues. - Along with the labor movement being in the center of economic justice, the labor movement is the natural, you know, coalition. Because within the labor movement, we all are: African American, Latinos, lesbian and gay, bisexual, and trans, we're all there because it's another face of America. So it's natural that the labor movement take that on. I think as lesbian and gay, bisexual, and transgender workers, we have to work through the labor movement and obviously bring the lesbian and gay community in on the fight for economic justice. We have to make the lesbian and gay, bisexual, and transgender community realize you're not just professionals and wealthy. Maybe you are, you know, maybe you have a good job and you make good money, but what about your other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender sisters, brothers, the working class ones, the working poor. You know, we don't recognize them, but we need to. And I think through the union we can, you know, make them more visible. - Do you see a reluctance though, in gay and lesbian people looking at whether they're gonna join the union or not thinking, well, maybe that's not a place that's gonna be friendly to me. - I think so. I think what happens is that if they're in a workplace with professionals and they can get what they need from their employers, they think they don't need the union. Again, because they're just thinking about themselves. You know, if you're thinking about everyone else, then you understand the idea of a union is not just for what you can get, but what you can get for your brothers and sisters for, you know, moving the, building the whole movement, you know. - There was some discussion earlier about lesbian and gay employee associations at certain companies, and the efforts that they've had in terms of, bargaining for or asking for domestic partner coverages, for a variety of other things. That doesn't carry the same weight as coming in as a truly organized, recognized, legally protected bargaining unit that can actually sit down and extract those benefits from employers that aren't as willing to go along. So we've touted some of the successes in places where we haven't really had as much leverage as we needed, but because employers were willing to go along for a ride. And the only way to really bring it along in all these other places is to have recognized organizations like the labor movement go out and fight for it. Now, the other reality though, is we are democratic organizations. I'm elected by a convention of members from across the West. So there's only so far you can go unless you organize a base behind yourself and with yourself. - Right. - And that's the crucial work that Pride At Work's doing, really organizing a constituency within the labor movement so that you have the support for this movement in that right direction. - So is there. - There's something-- - Go ahead. - There's another piece that, and I don't know, this may sound controversial, but one of the best things about having a kind of recognition and solidarity with the labor movement, whether you're in it or not, even for professionals, it's not just about connecting with people who are different, it's sort of about recognizing that you're a worker too. I mean most people, even professionals in this day and age with the global economy the way that it is, all kinds of people, management, middle management, who may have put a distance between themself and those workers who are in the union can be laid off like that. And their own interests increasingly actually do coincide with people who traditionally have been targeted for union organizing. There isn't this distance, it's a false distance. And when people, and also, I mean, my lover happens to be a doctor or a surgery resident, who's working 180 hours a week, 130 hours a week. I mean, she's exploited labor too and she knows it. And she would do very well, if her, if the residents were organized, in the medical schools or in the residency programs. It isn't just... We need to start recognizing sorta the worker within the professional classes as well. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's really about-- - So long as we don't do it at the... So long as we don't do it as the excuse for us saying, okay now we're gonna be involved because it's also professionals. So long as we don't lose sight, that there are a lot of other workers who really depend on that organizational infrastructure for their day to day protection. So if you do the professional representation without losing the necessary focus on other workers at the same time. And I think that actually you see part of the resurgence in the labor movement as we are going in and organizing traditionally unorganized areas. So that in LA County, at County USC, some of the docs and some of the residents are represented. I represent pharmacists, right? So you do have professionals that are represented. The attorneys at the LA County, at the State Bar Association are represented by Local 535. So there are those areas. But there's also an identity with the fact that there are a lot of other employees who need that sort of organizational infrastructure to protect their rights on a day to day basis. - Well, this is where I see the identity crisis in Americans that I alluded to before. Not only are they trying to climb out of their class as quickly as they can-- - But they don't identify with their class in the first place. - Well, it's true. They identify with the next class up and then they aim for it. But it's also a reluctance to identify with an oppressed class. I mean we've seen this in so many other things, and it is the same kind of about workers. You feel like you're more vulnerable if you are identified with a class, with either with gay people or you're a woman. I mean I remember guys who used to stand up when women were sexually harassed at work would suddenly themselves become the target of management's disapproval. And all of a sudden they get bad evaluations because they were identifying with, you know, with the oppressed class. And I think it's also been that way going the other way, trying to leave behind this notion of identifying. And members of our community not wanting to be seen either as troublemaker, which is to some extent the way the right wing has characterized and tried to discredit the union. Oh, they're troublemakers at work, you know, so I think-- - I think the centers have been marginalized. I mean, we are in a right wing era and I think we need to just keep remembering that: conservative values, individualism, materialism, as if the top 1% or the wealthiest people in this country serve the interests of everybody. And it's been, but this can change. I mean, it has changed before, it can change again. There was a time, I mean in the '60s and '70s, there was much more of an identification with peoples, if they were working class, they were proud to be working class. If they were, you know, middle class, they had solidarity with folks who were unionized and they also themselves, if they needed to be represented by unions, there was a spread into the white collar and pink collar industries and so forth. And it can happen again. I mean, I think it will happen, I hope it'll happen, more and more because of more responsive leadership, because of more responsive organizing, representing the constituencies within the broader labor movement and because of a vision, a sense of dynamism. That's what I see in labor. I mean, it's real some vision, you know, and it was missing for a couple of decades, let's face it. And we are a country that's been visionless for a couple of, for 20 years and it's an important part of it. It's what is this all about? It's not, it's about a living wage or it's about bread and butter issues, it's about rights to organize and rights in the workplace, but it's also about a social responsibility and a connectedness. And I think that that's where I think we're seeing some important leadership of gay and lesbians in the labor movement, of gays and lesbians, increasingly identifying, or at least being open to talking with folks who are in the labor movement. And I'm hoping that we see this grow like wildfire in the gay and lesbian community, that doesn't sort of continue just simply suck up to corporations and see that the A list gays parties is sort of where it's at. I mean, this is, this is, you know, this lacks heart. - So what would be, couple only couple minutes remaining. I love the way this goes by so fast, but it always is kind of frustrating, what would be the best possible outcome for, I mean, we, everybody's got millennium fever, so we say for the next millennium and what would be the best possible outcome? What would you want to see in organized labor? - Massive growth. I mean, pulling in more and more people, you know, people who are supporting each other. Changing the mood of the country. I'm really positive. I think it might take 10 or 20 years, and I think we need to find more and more people who are passionate about their compassion and that are willing to be in it for the long haul, 'cause it'll take a long, a lotta work, but it is gonna happen, I believe. - I'm an incrementalist. I mean, if you, I'd be happy if you made sure that in the next 10 years you expanded, you doubled or tripled the bargaining units that had domestic partner coverage, that you change the survivor benefit policies of trust funds throughout the state and throughout the country. If you did some very measurable gains that really impact our membership and then also grew membership over that same period of time. - Well, I'd love John Perez to be head of the AFL-CIO. (Sheila laughs) And I just really want conversations across movements. I want labor movement, gay and lesbians within the labor movement, and workplace organizers who are doing kind of workplace organizing, as professionals to be having more empathy and real conversation with working folks who are in unions, who happen to be gay, lesbian. More conversation, more organizing and a movement that is one movement, that includes everybody who wants to transform this country. - Torie, thank you. John, thank you. KipuKai, thank you. Most especially to you for watching. This is about work. This is about organizing. This is about our community. So next time you go to work, we're there. Get used to it. (upbeat music)