Peggy Shorey: Executive Director, Pride at Work A lifelong activist and 18-year union member, Peggy Shorey stepped up her fight for fair workplaces in January 2010 when she became the Executive Director of Pride at Work, an organization of LGBT union members and allies dedicated to ensuring labor rights and equality. She has advocated social economic justice for workers in diverse fields, including factory hands, dealers, mental health providers and adjunct professors. And her efforts aren’t limited to labor; in 2008, Shorey served as the manager for the Connecticut ballot campaign “No on Question #1,” which sought to avoid convening a constitutional convention for the purpose of overturning Connecticut’s marriage equality law. Building a coalition of labor unions, LGBT organizations, women’s and other civil rights group, the campaign ran on messages of marriage equality and choice, winning by a 19 point margin. She was also the founding co-president of the Connecticut chapter of Pride at Work in 1998 and co-founded the CT AIDS Bike Tour. Now based in Washington, D.C., Shorey recently convinced 70 state and national organizations to endorse a statement for LGBT and labor solidarity. “We are in exciting, changing and deeply challenging times in both the LGBT community and the labor movement. The struggles for economic justice and equality are intertwined,” Shorey says. “As the broader LGBT community, we have to rise to the times and show our best spirit of solidarity…To lift our community out of poverty and economic struggle, we must stand together to protect workers’ right to form a union and to create good jobs that put people back to work.”
