What is Pride Network?
Pride Network is a collective of unionists who identify as LGBTIQ+, campaigning together on the issues that affect our community. When you sign up to pride network, you will receive communications (email or text) about actions that unionists are taking in support of LGBTIQ+ rights. These might be things like:
- Marching at Pride
- Signing petitions on union LGBTIQ+ issues
- Attending actions to defend LGBTIQ+ youth
Our history
Workers in union have been campaigning for LGBTIQ+ rights for decades.
From Gay Liberation joining the May Day Committee in 1974 to the Gay Teachers and Students Group’s formation in 1975; from the "AIDS quilt" project at Trades Hall to the Plumbers Union's radical promise to fight discrimination as an industrial issue, LGBTIQ+ workers have a proud history of organising in union to make change. Unions' support for the 2017 Marriage Equality campaign was built on decades of work by LGBTIQ+ unionists.
The Victorian Gay Trade Unionist Group (VGTUG or GayTug) was active from at least 1978, marching under a Gay Unionists banner at May Day, caucusing within unions and advancing progressive policies in bargaining and union AGMs, and leafletting Victorian Trades Hall Council delegates. See this report by NSW and Victorian trade unionists to the National Homosexual Conference in 1979.