Globalization & the Challenge to the LGBT Labor Movement
By Pauline Park
co-founder, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
co-founder, Iban/Queer Koreans of New York

The massive protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 dramatized the growing resistance to globalization. What are the implications of globalization for labor and for labor organizations representing the workers of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community?

The term ‘globalization’ is a catchprhase that conveniently labels a complex phenomenon. At its simplest, globalization refers to the gradual erosion of the government of the national state and its ability to control and direct capital as well as labor. Sometimes call the ‘nation-state,’ the national state emerged in Britain and in France. In the 20th century, the founding of the social democratic state under Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933, the Popular Front government in france in 1936, and the Labour government in Britain in 1945 vastly expanded  the scope of national government activity. What Americans have called ‘liberalism’ ever since FDR, social democracy consists of four key components: the welfare state, regulation of business and industry, fiscal policy, and monetary policy.

The increasingly free flow of capital across national borders now threatens the ability of the national states to pursue autonomous fiscal, monetary, regulatory, and social welfare policies. It is now market forces — pre-eminently transnational corp[orations, institutional investors, and international currency speculators — that determine most policy outcomes. Hence globalization represents not only a threat to the social democratic revolution of the 20th century but a reversal of a thousand years of history.

The ultimate irony of it all is that the political left, which has been most closely associated with the process of state-building over the last century, has pursued the dismantling of the social democratic state with as much vigor as the right. Governments of the left have been presented with this choice: either govern from the center-right or face a reversal of policy by the forces of international capital. Regional integration through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (EU) represents an attempt by national governments to try to recover some degree of national autonomy by ‘pooling’ sovereignty, but it ultimately only accelerates the ‘hollowing out of the state’ by devolving authority upwards to regional formations such as NATA and the EU and downwards to sub-national units (in the US, state and local government).

Unfortunately, the weak labor provisions in regional and global trade agreements are more than offset by the gains made by international capital through such treaties. Equally unfortunate is the apparent inability of the left to offer credible alternatives to unregulated free trade that escape being labeled ‘protectionism.’ Everywhere, the discourse of neoliberal free trade dogma is triumphant. The hegemony of neoliberal discourse in academic circles and policy discussions, coupled with the increasing ability of transnational corporations to evade national regulation of labor standards, has led to a decline in the power of organized labor and in its ability to improve workplace conditions in the United States or abroad. As sweatshops multiply in New York’s Chinatown and in major cities throughout North America and Europe, transnational corporations have brought the Third World to us.

The old slogan of gay activists, “we are everywhere,” applies to LGBT workers as well: we are found not only making policy in corporate headquarters anbd ‘making partner’ in ‘white shoe’ law firms, but flipping burgers in fast food restaurants and sewing garments in sweatshops. Some of us — especially transgendered people and people of color — are unable to find legal employment at all because of pervasive discrimination. It is in the marginalization of LGBT people in labor markets from the advanced industrial economies to the less developed countries that the abstractions of globalization become most painfully concrete. And it is those among us — the working poor of the global village — who are most in need of progressive alternatives to the emerging international trade regime and the dismantling of the social democratic state.

LGBT labor activists must address the reality of the contemporary international political economy, namely, that the national state is no longer in a position to guarantee the rights of labor, even when labor-supportive heads of government are elected. That is not to say that a change of national administration is meaningless. The ‘election’ of George W. Bush as president will deepen the challenge for organized labor in the United States, even if it is only a case of going from bad to worse.

But Bush is both empowered an constrained by ‘non-state actors’ — in particular, transnational capital — that elude control by any national state. No national government now commands the economy ostensibly under its control. And given the hegemony of neoliberal (i.e., conservative) discourse in policymaking circles, national governments throughout the world are pursuing policies that do more to undermine the well-being and security of workers than they do to enhance them. In such adverse circumstances, what can LGBT labor activists do?

First, activists must counter neoliberal discourse with economic analysis that is empirical, analytic, and persuasive, leaving behind the crudely deterministic model of class struggle as the cause of all oppression. Second, those activists who have a Romantic attachment to particular modes of activism should re-examine those tactics to determine how effective they are in contemporary circumstances. Third, activists must form alliances across national boundaries and across lines of race, ethnicity, language, class, sexuality, and gender.

What does this mean in practical terms? To be successful in today’s political culture, a movement must simultaneously play both an ‘insider’ and an ‘outsider’ game; and an LGBT labor movement must do so not only at the national and subnational levels, but at the international level as well. International institutions such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organization are not autonomous. In order to influence them, activists must change policies in the member states that control them; and in order to do that, activists must change the behavior of the transnational corporate interests that influence the member governments.

To be effective, therefore, LGBT labor activists must build transnational coalitions. One example of such transnational organizing is the movement to diverst the stock of companies doing business in South Africa, which helped bring about the end of the apartheid regime. Significantly, the government of Nelson Mandela elected in 1994 promulgated a constitutional amendment that includes the broadest protections based on sexual orientation contained in any national constitution.

The challenges before the LGBT labor movement are great. But we are at a unique moment in history when we as LGBT people can make a contribution to the labor movement that will help improve the lives of workers throughout the world. In order to do so, we must think globablly, and we must act locally, nationally, and internationally.

Pauline Park did her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and wrote her dissertation on the Maastricht Treaty on European Union.

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This article originally appeared in two parts, in the winter & spring 2001 issues of the Pride At Work newsletter.

[Notice following Part I:]

Pride At Work is proud to announce that Pauline Park will be a featured speaker at the June 2001 Pride At Work Convention. Pauline will focus her presentation on international political economy and the LGBT movement. This article (and Part Two, which will highlight the role of the LGBT labor movement in the global economy) make clear the theoretical strength, as well as political experience, Pauline will bring to her remarks. Mark your calendar now: Pride At Work 4th Biennial Convention, Everett, Washington, June 21-24, 2001!

[Preface to Part II:]

In Part I (Convention Previews), I examined the phenomenon of globalization and the dilemma for governments of the left that come into power only to implement economic policies associated with the right. In this article, I would like to examine the prospects for change and the role of the LGBT labor movement in fostering such change.

[Notice following Part II:]

Pauline Park will be speaking on international political economy and the LGBT labor movement at the Pride At Work 4th Biennial conference in Everett, Washington.

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Brooklyn Gay Democrats Turn 25

In a first, top Lambda honor goes to non-Brooklynite, Tom Duane

By Mick Meenan
Gay City News
18 April 2003

A host of Democratic officials gathered in Brooklyn Saturday, April 12, to join the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the Lambda Independent Democrats (LID), the borough’s gay political club. The noon fest at the historic Gage and Tollner restaurant in downtown Brooklyn showcased the insurgent influence of a once-local political club turned citywide power broker. “I was a high school freshman when LID was formed in 1977,” said Dan Tietz, LID’s president, in opening remarks, referring to his boyhood on a Wisconsin dairy farm.

The bevy of members of Congress, state legislators, and City Councilmembers present attested to the club’s ongoing efforts to influence policy on a host of issues of concern to the LGBT community. The gathering included a virtual Who’s Who of Democratic politics in Brooklyn and beyond, including United States Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Nydia Valazquez, both of whom represent districts that include sections of Brooklyn turf, as well as a host of state and city officials, including out gay State Senator Tom Duane, an honoree. The event showcased the eagerness of city Democrats to align themselves with the LGBT agenda. “SONDA is an accomplishment,” said David Yassky, a City Councilmember who represents Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, and Park Slope. “Marriage equality is in sight.”

The club presented awards to a variety of individuals for their achievements in service to the LGBT community. Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president who previously represented Park Slope in the State Senate, introduced Irene Lore, a Brooklyn native and recipient of an award for her philanthropic efforts as a restaurateur and supporter of civic groups in the LGBT community. “Marty and I have a lot in common,” Lore quipped. “We’re both dykes. We both love Brooklyn.” Alan Van Capelle, the incoming executive director at the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), introduced the recipients of the Pride at Work Award, bestowed on Carl Eden and Pauline Park, both of whom have been outspoken in their respective unions about LGBT inclusiveness.

“When most think of the AFL-CIO,” said Park, a transgendered woman, “they don’t think of me. But I am a union member.” Park is a unionized writer and co-chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA). Eden, talked about being a member of the Radical Faeries, a gay spiritual fellowship that dates back to the late 1970s. In his remarks, Van Capelle emphasized the importance of fostering coalitions between labor unions and LGBT organizations. Van Capelle is currently deputy political director at Local 32 BJ, a buildings service workers union affiliated with SEIU. “One of the first picket lines I went to, the workers were chanting the boss was a faggot,” said Van Capelle. “ A progressive philosophy at the administrative level doesn’t always trickle down to the rank and file.” The lesson Van Capelle concluded, is that “labor and LGBT issue are intertwined.”

In a recent conversation with Gay City News, Van Capelle discussed such coalition building in the context of Intro 101, a bill now before the City Council that would strengthen prevention of childhood lead poisoning. Studies have shown that the majority of victims are children of color in the inner city. Such issues as “living wage bill, lead paint removal, and predatory lending,” said Van Capelle, “affect LGBT individuals as they do others and our community needs to acquaint itself with the organizations that seek to redress such issues in light of the coalition-building we seek to foster redress for our needs.”

State Senator Tom Duane received the Peter Vogel Service Award, a first for a non-Brooklyn native. Vogel, an LID pioneer who died of AIDS, was a longtime gay rights activist and served as the gay and lesbian liaison for former Governor Mario Cuomo. In his introduction, State Senator Carl Andrews of Brooklyn referred to Duane as “the conscience of the Senate.” By way of opening his remarks, Duane quipped, “I was raised in Queens and went to an all gay Catholic high school.” Duane discussed the fights Democrats are facing over the Albany budget, including possible cuts looming in social services directed to the LGBT community. Duane also recapped his Senate floor fight this past December, when he unsuccessfully fought to include a transgender rights amendment to the Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Bill (SONDA). “I want to thank the 19 senators who voted with us to amend SONDA,” he said. “Nineteen Senators is a lot of senators.” The State Senate has 61 members, and a Republican majority. Duane called for overturning the Rockefeller drug laws, viewed by many elected officials and drug policy experts as stacked against people of color, as well as safeguarding against measures which “criminalize people with HIV.” The latter comment was a reference to a bill pending in Albany that calls for mandatory HIV testing for any person who assaults a law enforcement official.

A number of Duane’s Senate colleagues were present, including Andrews and Velmanette Montgomery, another Brooklyn Democrat. Also present at the event were City Councilmember Bill DeBlasio, Ronald Johnson of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Matt Chachère, the lead attorney for NYCCELP, a community-based group seeking to enact a stricter childhood lead poisoning law, and his wife, Judge Margarita López Torres, Dick Dadey, the former head of ESPA, and C. Virginia Fields, the Manhattan Borough President. Bethany Joseph, a former LID official, Joey Pressley, the head of the New York AIDS Coalition, and Andrea Batista Schlesinger, who is also active with the Out People of Color Political Action Club, were also recognized for their activism in the community.

This article originally appeared in the 18 April 2003 issue of Gay City News.

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