As corporations sponsor floats and employee marches during Pride Month parades, it’s important to remember just how recently the majority of American office workers felt they had to conceal their sexuality in the workplace. In the 1970s there were no legal protections for LGBTQ workers outside of a handful of cities. If a company found out you were gay, it could fire you on the spot. It took a group of pioneering LGBTQ workers in the 1980s and ’90s who challenged widespread homophobia in corporate America to make workplaces safer and more inclusive, not only for LGBTQ workers but for everyone. Since 2021, I’ve been studying LGBTQ workplace rights activists at one of those corporations: Kodak. The iconic camera and film manufacturer has been headquartered in Rochester, New York, since 1881. At a time when most employees were closeted, a group of the company’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans employees came together to form the Lambda Network to reshape Kodak’s corporate culture and company policies. The company officially recognized the group in 1993. Alongside my undergraduate research assistants at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I’ve been documenting and preserving the history of the Lambda Network. We’ve interviewed more than 30…
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How LGBTQ employees at Kodak risked their careers to build a safer, more inclusive workplace
Source: The Conversation Arts — CC BY-ND 4.0