Unions have bargained recent contracts that include “protections around pronouns, anti-harassment language, non-discrimination, health and safety, [and] expansive health benefits to include trans benefits,” Reilly-Collins says, and they emphasize the importance of prioritizing the needs of queer workers, ensuring proper representation of queer workers and workers of color on bargaining teams, and elevating queer voices to leadership positions.

“Workers’ rights and LGBTQ rights — we can’t have solidarity unless we address all issues,” Reilly-Collins tells Teen Vogue.

Queer labor activists have been fighting against discriminatory policies and demanding better protections since the early 20th century, when organizers like the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU)’s Pauline Newman, Helen Marot (who was executive secretary of the New York Women’s Trade Union League), and IWW member and radical abortion provider Dr. Marie Equi went toe-to-toe with the bosses to fight for their fellow workers.

When Rose Schneiderman — who famously coined the slogan “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too” — was hired as the National Women’s Trade Union League’s (WTUL) first full-time, working-class Jewish organizer, her salary was paid by a donation from a wealthy, anonymous Jewish lesbian.

The Marine Cooks and Stewards Union (MCSU), notable for its acceptance of both Black and gay members during a time when many unions were far less welcoming to either group, elected Stephen Blair, who was openly gay, to the position of vice president in the 1930s. Blair’s partner, Frank McCormick, helped organize San Francisco’s 1934 dockworkers’ strike alongside Harry Hay, a Communist and gay rights activist who, with fellow gay activist Morris Kight, founded the Mattachine Society.

The MCSU — which flew a banner proclaiming “Race-baiting, Red-baiting, and Queer-Baiting is Anti-Union” in its union hall — won the first workplace protections for gay people in U.S. history in one of their contracts. “You couldn’t be fired for anything except for not doing your job — you had to violate something in the contract. So being gay was not a reason for being fired,” queer labor historian Allan Berube explained.

The ‘70s were pivotal in solidifying the relationship between the LGBTQ community and the labor movement. In 1970, the American Federation of Teachers became the first federal labor union to make a public statement calling for an end to discrimination against LGBTQ workers. In San Francisco, in 1977, the Teamsters union joined with queer activists to boycott Coors beer, which at the time was both anti-LGBTQ and anti-union as well as racist in its hiring practices. Local organizers like Howard Wallace, an openly gay truck driver, worked with Teamsters leadership and local distribution centers to ensure the boycott’s success. City supervisor Harvey Milk, who was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S. and was assassinated in 1978, supported the boycott. Following the campaign, Milk used his influence to encourage the Teamsters to hire openly gay truck drivers as well as to defeat the Briggs Amendment, a California state ballot measure that would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from employment.

“The gay bartenders marched out with the bottles of beer and dumped them in the sewers,” remembers Nancy Wohlforth, the now-retired secretary-treasurer of the Office and Professional Employees and co-founder of Pride At Work, the AFL-CIO’s constituency group for LGBTQ people. “And to this day, you can’t find Coors in a gay bar in San Francisco.”