What Unions Can and Must Do

Still today, many people linked to the LGBT community must deal with a series of formal types of discrimination (regarding the policies and decisions a company makes) and informal types as well (regarding the climate at the company and interpersonal dynamics) that make work experiences problematic. • The approach taken by labor unions to diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity within companies is peculiar on various fronts, differentiating it from the approach of Diversity Management, that is more oriented towards business. The differences derive from a basic logic oriented towards workers’ rights and equal opportunity, rather than enhancement of a company’s human resources. • Due also to their links with the world of activism, unions seem to be the only interlocutor able to offer protection and support to the most marginalized LGBT workers, such as self-employed or young workers without stable contracts, or those that don’t have the good fortune to work in companies attentive to the question of discrimination.