IMF endorses meeting of gay, lesbian trade unionists

AUSTRALIA: The International Metalworkers’ Federation has stated it fully endorses and supports “Workers Out!” on the occasion of its 2nd World Conference of Lesbian and Gay Trade Unionists, to take place in Sydney, Australia, on October 31-November 2, 2002. Topics to be covered at the meeting range from coming out to colleagues to disabilities and sexuality, transgender organising, and the role of parliamentary representatives working towards workplace rights reform. Workers Out! says that its aims are to:

• integrate defence of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers’ rights into the human rights programmes of national and international trade union structures;
• achieve representation of lesbian and gay workers’ rights in union and labour conventions at an international level, and in legislative and policy change at a local level;
• facilitate the development of workplace policies on HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases in which the rights of people with HIV/AIDS and other affected workers are protected.

In a letter to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, which is one of the sponsors for the conference, Marcello Malentacchi, IMF general secretary, said that “the IMF commends you on this extremely important initiative to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation, and it should be a commitment of the global trade union movement to fight this and other forms of discrimination.” The conference is being held in conjunction with the Sydney 2002 Gay Games. Workers Out! organised its first world conference in 1998 in Amsterdam, on “Trade Unions, Homosexuality and Work.”