Workers Out Conference, Sydney, October 2002

Judie Alison went with the CTU Out@Work delegation to Workers Out!

As someone who had attended the first conference for queer unionists in Amsterdam in 1998, it was a real buzz to be able to go to its sucessor in Sydney in 2002.

There were only a few of us there who had been in Amsterdam, and it was great to catch up and to talk about what people had achieved in the four years between.

There were more New Zealanders this time, not surprisingly, though the fact that we could produce only twelve when it was in Sydney, and had managed to get three as far as Amsterdam, ws a bit of a disappointment. And nearly all of us in Sydney were from Wellington - whats with queer uninoists in the rest of the country?

Robin Duff from Christchurch and I repsoresnted PPTA at the conference and we did a workshop reporting on what PPTA had done about issues for queer students and teachers through our union since the Amsterdam conference.

This provoked good dialogue with educators from other countries especially from the Netherlands. I was presented by them with a little china souvenir of two women in Dutch national dress kissing. It occupies pride of place on the bookshelf in my ofice at PPTA.

I was also part of the performances by The G Strings, a lesbian singing group which has developed out of the Wellington union choir, Choir, Choir, Pants on Fire. We wowed them at the opening ceromony.

A particlaur hit was our queer version of the traditional union song Solidarity Forever. Our PPTA workshop began with a rendition by the G Strings of a song I had written specially for the occasion called Out and Proud. It is about the significance in the lives of young GLBT students of having teachers who are out in their schools, so that they can see that there are happy and successful people who are not heterosexual.

A plenary presentation which had a particular impact on me was a speech by Rebecca Sevilla, the EEO offcier for Educational International. She is Brazillian. She reminded the conference that while there had been advances or GLBT people in the world, there were stil countries with the death penalty for homosexualtiy.

There was however a developing global consensus about discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, including top level participation in the human rights system, and there had been more gains than losses. She said People in developing countries want bread and freedom simultaneously, not bread first."

Being at the conference was very energising, and I'm starting to think already about how I can find the money to go to the next one which is in Montreal, Canada in 2006. Lets get lots of New Zealand queer unionists there!

Boys at the Workers Out conference (picture)