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Labor Studies Journal 27.3 (2002) 117-118



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Book Review

Out at Work:
Building a Gay-Labor Alliance


Out at Work: Building a Gay-Labor Alliance. Edited by Kitty Krupat and Patrick McCreery. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 290 pp. $19.95 paper. $49.95 cloth.

Out at Work: Building a Gay-Labor Alliance is a collection of essays exploring the intersections and the possibilities for growing collaboration between two movements that overlap in terms of both people and aims, but that have not always been comfortable bedfellows. The contributors include well-known figures from both movements, such as John Sweeney and Rep. Barney Frank, as well as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) unionists who have been working hard to carve out space in both places at once and other grassroots activists.

The last decade has seen an amazing revitalization in the labor movement. This renewal has been based first and foremost on the understanding that our survival and growth depend on the movement's ability to reach out to and welcome into its ranks all the varieties of human beings that make up today's working class in its dazzling heterogeneity. Arguably no group other than immigrants has seen its status in the labor movement more radically altered by this new spirit of inclusiveness than have LGBT unionists.

Not so long ago, we LGBT unionists may have been accepted as individuals in our unions if we were lucky, or harassed and openly discriminated against if we were not. But in almost no case were our issues considered legitimate union issues. Now we have an official AFL-CIO constituency group, Pride at Work, with 17 chapters and members in over 30 states.

Of course, our new acceptance did not come about simply as a gift from the AFL-CIO. Rather, acceptance by the AFL-CIO came about as a result of many years of organizing by LGBT unionists in their locals, their cities, and finally nationwide.

Out at Work is not so much a chronicle of this movement as it is a scrapbook filled with "snapshots" of various significant points in that ongoing history. Like snapshots, the contributions have the immediacy and variety that come with being part of an ongoing struggle. If they lack the clear focus and careful composition of studio shots, it is because the movement has not yet congealed an "official" narrative or agreed-upon analysis of its history.

The essays and discussions that make up this collection range from personal recollection to scholarly analysis. They describe situations where the participants happened to be gay and lesbian—but could as easily have [End Page 117] been from another oppressed group—and situations where queer culture and sensibilities were intrinsic to the outcome of the story.

Despite the diversity of voices, there is an overall perspective that suffuses most of the contributions. This view seeks to move beyond both the lowest-common-denominator unity of the old labor movement, which was too often constructed by suppressing the issues of women, people of color, queers, and others, as well as the isolationism that often came with identity politics. Instead, the contributors to Out at Work posit a movement of alliances, or an alliance of movements, that draws strength from its diversity. Those of us at the intersection of two movements then occupy a strategic position as people who can move in both worlds and work to bring them into alignment with each other.

A consequence of the above perspective is that the importance of other movements for social justice cannot be ignored. Thus another common thread among many of the essays is the need to make alliances with, and learn from, people of color, women, and others. Likewise, these writers that revel in diversity give short shrift to the assimilationist strategy that keeps popping up in the LGBT movement. The clear message is that we need to fight for all our members, not just those that conform most closely to the norm of the heterosexual nuclear family.

The book is aimed at a general audience and...

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