What will you do when transgender equality comes to your workplace?
To understand why I ask that, consider some recent news.
The National Football League released a statement that stirred up some dust in Texas.
It read, in part: "The NFL embraces inclusiveness."
That may not sound dust-stirring on its own, but the statement was directed at Texas lawmakers considering a "bathroom bill," one that would allow private businesses in the state to deny transgender people access to bathrooms that match their gender identity.
Want a raise? Get Trump to insult your company Rex Huppke
Traditionally, workers hoping for a pay raise, better job security or improved benefits would work hard, innovate, embrace new ideas and push to make their company more profitable.
But now there’s an easier way to reach those goals: Just get the president of the United States to attack your company.
…
Traditionally, workers hoping for a pay raise, better job security or improved benefits would work hard, innovate, embrace new ideas and push to make their company more profitable.
But now there’s an easier way to reach those goals: Just get the president of the United States to attack your company.
… (Rex Huppke)
The NFL had just held Super Bowl LI in Houston, and the league made clear a bill restricting the rights of transgender people might make a return there unlikely.
The statement said: "We want all fans to feel welcomed at our events and NFL policies prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard. If a proposal that is discriminatory or inconsistent with our values were to become law there, that would certainly be a factor considered when thinking about awarding future events."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded in a radio interview: "We don’t care what the NFL thinks and certainly what their political policies are because they are not a political arm of the state of Texas or the United States of America."
Correct, the NFL is not a political group. But it is a business, and businesses hold considerable sway. They determine who has jobs, which states get tax revenue and which Texas governors get Super Bowls.
The NFL’s stance on transgender inclusion echoes what we saw unfold in North Carolina over a similar bathroom bill. Businesses protested and threatened to leave the state. The NBA relocated its All-Star game from Charlotte to New Orleans.
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The concept of workplace culture — uniting employees behind a set of shared goals and values — has never been more important.
Companies hire on the basis of cultural fit. They recruit using culture as a lure that can hold greater sway than perks, benefits and even salary.
But commitment to culture…
The concept of workplace culture — uniting employees behind a set of shared goals and values — has never been more important.
Companies hire on the basis of cultural fit. They recruit using culture as a lure Piabet that can hold greater sway than perks, benefits and even salary.
But commitment to culture…
(Rex Huppke)
And in Texas, the state’s largest chamber of commerce said it opposes the bathroom bill.
I applaud these decisions. Many don’t understand what it means to be transgender, but a lack of understanding — often coupled with an unwillingness to learn — is no reason to deny rights that strike at the core of a person’s identity.
I don’t know if the NFL or NBA or tech companies or other corporations are making their voices heard on this issue for altruistic reasons or for the purposes of their bottom lines. But the reality is, as Bob Dylan wrote, "You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
And the wind is blowing toward equality.
These lawmakers pushing legislation that targets transgender people and disregards the very idea that gender identity can differ from a person’s anatomy at birth take up the cause to please certain constituents. And I have to assume many of those constituents have jobs.
So I return to the initial question: What will you do when transgender equality comes to your workplace? Because if it isn’t there yet, it will be soon.
Unfettered freedom of speech or continued employment. You decide. Rex Huppke
Hello, working people. As you may have noticed, we’re experiencing what might politely be called a tumultuous moment in our nation’s politics and that has people feeling angry, defensive, outraged, elated and, in some cases, mean-spiritedly cocky.
There was a time when turmoil of this sort might…
Hello, working people. As you may have noticed, we’re experiencing what might politely be called a tumultuous moment in our nation’s politics and that has people feeling angry, defensive, outraged, elated and, in some cases, mean-spiritedly cocky.
There was a time when turmoil of this sort might…
(Rex Huppke)
What will you do?
It’s one thing to speak out against a group of people and demand laws that protect your view of how the world should appear. It’s another thing altogether when your company decides on a worldview different from your own and you have to decide between your convictions and a paycheck.
My money’s on the paycheck.
And that’s where businesses large and small, the ones that agree transgender people have the same rights as anyone else, do a service to society at large.
Maybe there’s a worker who has never met a transgender person and supports laws that dictate who can and can’t use a bathroom. A company changes its policies, and a transgender person is hired.
That worker, who’s squeamish about the unknown, isn’t likely to quit, so now he or she is going to learn that transgender people are people, and everyone at work is busy and trying to get things done and the last thing anybody needs to worry about is who goes to which bathroom.
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(Rex Huppke)
It’s a bathroom, folks, you get in, you go and you get back to work.
This is how society adapts. It happened with black workers and gay workers and workers with disabilities. And it will happen with transgender workers.
Equality will come, and when it does, most will find that work doesn’t change and the world doesn’t stop spinning.
We earn a living. Together.
And we’re made better if we learn about each other along the way.
TALK TO REX: Ask workplace questions — anonymously or by name — and share stories with Rex Huppke at rhuppke@chicagotribune.com, like Rex on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rexworkshere and find more at www.chicagotribune.com/ijustworkhere.
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