“I Want to Know How to Protect Myself without Scaring Our Patients”

Abstract

Drawing on union convention proceedings, reports, newspapers, speeches, and internal memoranda, this article uses the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) as a case study to explore organized labor’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. One the one hand, it shows that AFSCME eventually embraced an ambitious, two-pronged program that fought both for strong workplace safety measures for its members and against discrimination toward those most affected by HIV/AIDS. On the other, it highlights the ways in which the union’s campaign was constrained by a narrow focus on workplace hazards. Prioritizing workers’ protections over patients’ demands for privacy in diagnosis and treatment, AFSCME ultimately subsumed its rhetorical commitment to working-class solidarity beneath what many members saw as a practical need for somatic surveillance and segregation—marginalizing the very communities that the union claimed to protect.