Twenty-five GLBT union organizers representing unions from across the country were in San Diego this past week to attend the national executive board meeting of Pride at Work, the GLBT constituency group for the AFL-CIO. Hosted by San Diego’s Pride at Work organization, the three-day meeting took place from Friday, March 12, through Sunday, March 14, at the Handlery Hotel in Mission Valley. The goal of the meeting was to set the organization’s national priorities in the 2004 election year.

“Some of the priorities have to do with, for example, how can we support the general movement in the LGBT community towards marriage equality and how can we engage labor in that fight,” said Brian Polejes, a national Pride at Work board member and the San Diego representative for SEIU (Service Employees International Union), the largest union in the AFL-CIO. “There were a number of delegates there from Boston who reported first hand on their efforts to engage labor in Massachusetts.”

Pride at Work representatives have worked with labor unions and the AFL-CIO in Boston to get support for full marriage equality. While they have not been able to achieve that goal, they did manage to get the unions to oppose any state constitutional amendment in Massachusetts that would have precluded civil unions or domestic partner benefits. (The point was rendered moot last week when the state’s legislatures approved the wording for a constitutional amendment that would allow for civil unions.)

Currently, the national co-chairs of Pride at Work, Josh Cazares and Nancy Wohlforth, are working in an ongoing effort with the AFL-CIO to gain full support for marriage equality.

Polejes indicated that educating many of labors blue-collar workers on an issue like marriage equality may be an uphill battle.

“Labor’s diverse. For example, I represent white-collar workers who are social services workers for San Diego County,” said Polejes. “We do have support from the full range of labor organizations as long as we can connect it to workers, their families and benefits, because the bottom-line issues for labor are wages and working conditions and benefits. These issues do connect to benefits and that’s where the nexus is between the marriage equality movement and getting support from labor.”

Polejes added, “We have more support from SEIU, AFSCME, (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), American Federation of Teachers and some of the more white-collar unions than we might from some other unions, but that isn’t to say that there isn’t support from them as well.”

Polejes pointed out that many of the members of Pride at Work are also active members of their local labor councils or are staffers in their local unions. He stressed the importance of educating fellow activists and members about the issues and their relevance to labor.

The other primary issue discussed at last week’s board meeting was the need for increased involvment from GLBT members of unions in the Midwest and the South. While there are strong labor unions in both of these areas, very few of those unions have representatives involved with Pride at Work and all of the board members who attended this year’s board meeting were either from the East or West Coast.