worker rights

Robyn Few, co-founder of Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), died this Thursday from cancer. Few had been living with the illness for several years and continued to travel the world to spread awareness for sex worker’s rights until her untimely death. A woman of unabashed determination to bring justice to sex workers, Few worked tirelessly for the simplest of human rights and was fundamental in commencing December 17th as International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

She was a pioneer in trans and lesbian issues, workers rights, and intersectionality long before anyone could define the phrase. Her partner, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and family offered us this obituary.

When I was young and perhaps a little naïve, I thought then when someone said they were a Democrat it meant they were pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-worker, pro-access to health care . . . you know for all the things that meant being socially progressive.

She is not a victim. Don’t call her one and don’t even think about it to yourself as you’re sitting in a quiet room. She is a wife, partner, friend, co-worker, gay rights activist, wine-lover, and humble spirit. Charlene Strong, age 47, also happens to be a lesbian. Her very private and devastating story made national headline news in 2006 when a flash flood plummeted into Seattle, Washington’s Madison Valley. The effects of the storm killed her wife of nine years, Kate Fleming. In an instant, Strong was thrust into the media spotlight as an activist and film subject depicted in the monumental award-winning Trick Dog Films documentary For My Wife.

The Labor Department will announce on Wednesday that gay and lesbian employees will be entitled to unpaid time off to care for their partners' newborns or loved ones. This move would give gay members in the American work force equal opportunity to access the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Two married gay rights activists in Zimbabwe, Ellen Chadehama, 34, and Ignatius Mhambi, 38, were arrested and later subjected to torture tactics for possessing pornographic material and for insulting president Robert Mugabe. The two allegedly possessed photographs of gay sex acts and posted a letter in their office from former San Francisco mayor Willie Lewis Brown.  The letter reportedly criticized Mugabe's opposition to homosexuality.

National coffee chain Starbucks received a card Thursday, thanking them for their continued support of marriage equality in the company's home state of Washington. The National Organization for Marriage launched a boycott against Starbucks because the company's leaders supported marriage equality legislation that recently passed in Washington. NOM recruited about 28,000 to "Dump Starbucks," but a counter-protest to "Thank Starbucks" grabbed the attention of 640,000 marriage supporters.

Amnesty should listen to sex workers, not Hollywood actresses - they're the most affected and they know what they're talking about.

Comments of celebration, and some inevitable criticism, began to flow late Friday night and into the Pride weekend worldwide as New York, the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement, became the sixth and most populous state, in addition to Washington, D.C., to give same-sex couples the right to civil marriages through a historic vote in the Republican-led state senate.

Hobby Lobby just got a religious exemption from science. Yes, science.

Dr. KIng's words resonate to this day and to the LGBT movement.

Wal-Mart did not violate an employee's civil rights when the company fired her for making antigay comments to fellow worker, a federal appeals court ruled last week. Tanisha Matthews was working as an overnight stocker from 1996 to 2005 in an Illinois Wal-Mart. One night during a break, the Apostolic Christian engaged with other workers about homosexuality, debating whether LGBT people were headed to Hell.

Members of the Democratic caucus are taking on The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill which would provide Federal job protections for gay and transgender workers. Like Don't Ask Don't Tell, ENDA is a hot button topic on the hill, and has little to no chance of being passed before November.  Thankfully, some representatives are willing to fight for what's right.

Some 53 percent feel they have to hide their identity, says a new Human Rights Campaign Foundation study, which reports on other workplace problems as well.

Cynthia Nicole, a leading Honduras transgender rights defender, was murdered on January 9, 2009 in Barrio Guaserique in Comayaguela, a town just outside the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.  The most recent attack in a rash of murders against transgender people.