Labor & Employment Law

Peggy Shorey Named Pride At Work?s Executive Director

By James Parks

Peggy Shorey

Pride At Work (P@W), the AFL-CIO’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) constituency group, has selected longtime activist Peggy Shorey as its new executive director. Shorey has been an organizer and community leader in Connecticut for the past 17 years.

Shorey began union organizing in 1993 and has worked for both the UAW and SEIU. For the past 10 years, she has been an executive officer with the Greater Hartford Central Labor Council and also served on the Executive Board for the Connecticut AFL-CIO.  An openly bisexual union leader, she was founding co-president of the Connecticut chapter of Pride At Work.

Donna Cartwright, co-president of P@W, says:

Peggy has a long history as a union and LGBT leader with extensive skills running social justice nonprofits. She has built effective and vibrant coalitions?including partnerships with unions, the faith community, political and community organizations and the broader LGBT community?the kind of coalitions that change opinions and win lasting victories. 

As an organizer for the UAW, Shorey helped workers form a union at Foxwoods Resort Casino, the large Connecticut casino. Most recently, she has helped organize and mobilize Connecticut state health care workers.

This year, the Connecticut Chapter of Pride At Work, under Shorey’s leadership, joined with the state chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists to successfully submit a resolution at the AFL-CIO Convention calling for nondiscrimination in employment based on gender identity and expression.

Shorey succeeds Jeremy Bishop, who left earlier this year to join the Obama administration’s Labor Department. She will begin her new job in January 2010.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on December 17, 2009 (boomark / email).