Despite important progress toward equal rights for LGBTI workers over the past decades, IUF affiliates are continuing the fight against LGBTI discrimination in a number of regions including Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. As part of the IUF LGBTI Workers and Allies Committee’s 2022 agenda, IUF affiliates are building local coalitions with LGBTI organizations and using their political power to lobby governments to revise anti-LGBTI policies which enable discrimination and thereby undermine workplace solidarity.
- With the support of the IUF Caribbean region, IUF affiliate CCWU has been working with a local NGO, Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD), in Guyana to build the Labor-LGBTI alliance around anti-discrimination laws in a country where same-sex intimacy is still illegal
- IUF Latin America continues to lead the fight for LGBTI rights in the workplace with ongoing trainings across the region including in Brazil where anti-LGBTI violence has increased dramatically under the right-wing government; in Guatemala where anti-LGBTI laws are gaining momentum including anti-trans legislation and the outlawing of same-sex marriage, the IUF is stepping up its lobbying efforts to persuade politicians that laws which promote any form of discrimination are a trade union issue and threaten workplace unity
- IUF Africa has committed to organizing the fight back against a new anti-LGBTI bill in Ghana which would make it illegal for people simply to be LGBTI in a country where same-sex intimacy is already punishable by up to 3 years in prison; the new proposed law would also criminalize the funding and publicizing of LGBTI activities including trade union work aimed at preventing anti-LGBTI discrimination in the workplace
IUF General Secretary Sue Longley stated, “An injury to one is an injury to all. As the IUF Congress in 2017 made clear, LGBTI workers deserve the same rights as all workers, and we will continue to fight around the world until justice for LGBTI workers is achieved.”
