By Jamie Fleming 
Today is the last day of June, which means that another Pride month is drawing to a close. As I prepare to take my enormous rainbow heart Pride flag down from outside (and offer thanks to my husband, who welcomes its annual display without a word of complaint), I’d like to take a moment to recognize a voice not often heard from in our Teamsters Union: today, we congratulate Brother Patrick Polk on being the first openly gay man elected by his coworkers to serve on a rank-and-file Construction Bargaining Committee.
The rank-and-file Bargaining Committee the members elected to negotiate the next AGC contract – a contract that covers hundreds of construction Teamsters throughout Washington state – was already unusual in that it contained two women. Construction, unsurprisingly, is a male-dominated industry. But the inclusion of Brother Polk, a 15+ year Teamster out of Scarsella Bros Construction, was in some ways even more interesting. After all, when you think of Teamster dump truck drivers, ‘accepting of the gays’ probably isn’t the first characteristic that comes to mind. So I sat down with Patrick to talk about his industry and how things have changed over his years working construction. Through his story, we can see that the Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) of the Teamsters is alive and well, adapting with the times to promote inclusion and tolerance of every different type of person, to the betterment of us all.
Patrick first started as a construction driver in 2005, taking on a job at the same company his father worked at in southern Washington. “Things were hush-hush-hush then,” he says, describing the precautions he took to keep his coworkers from finding out about his sexual orientation. “It was very early, long before everything was accepted. So I kept it pretty close to my sleeve, so that it wouldn’t come back and bite me in the future.”
I ask if coworkers ever made negative comments or rude jokes about homosexuals, and he laughs. “Of course! All the time. It was … kind of awkward.” He describes his decision to keep this aspect of his life a well-guarded secret, at least at first. “I was really cautious about what I said and did because I didn’t know what people might think or believe. I didn’t need that stigma. I always told myself I wouldn’t talk about it at work until everyone knew me. I wanted people to know me for me first, rather than just finding this out and suddenly I’m just ‘the gay guy.’ I think this has helped me through the years, and gotten me to where I am now.”
As for where he is now, he describes a situation almost entirely different from the secrecy and caution of his early days in the construction industry. Patrick and his husband have been together since 2007, and he says he’s been more-or-less “out” at work since 2009. His husband occasionally attends Local 174 events just as any other Teamster spouse might do. “Nobody cares now,” Patrick says happily. “Nobody cares.”
Of course, there are occasional exceptions to this “nobody cares” attitude: Patrick describes a situation where an older coworker wanted to join a carpool with Patrick and another driver, but quietly asked the other man to be sure never to leave him alone with Patrick, ‘just in case.’ “I just roll my eyes at stuff like that now,” Patrick says. “Because it’s the exception, not the rule.”
“Besides,” he says with a laugh, “if it makes that guy feel better to think I might be interested in him, well, good for him I guess.”
In truth, the change in atmosphere Patrick describes is so dramatic it can be hard to even convey. Instead of being forced to hide a major aspect of who he is to avoid being ostracized, now it’s the homophobes who face pushback. “Everybody knows, and it’s totally accepted at work, which means that when new people come into the mix at the company, they might be thrown off a little bit. But if they try to have an attitude about it, they find out pretty quick that they’re the ones who are wrong. Everybody has my back.”
Few are more pleased about the influx of diverse opinions into our Union than Local 174 Secretary-Treasurer Rick Hicks, who makes a point of giving a platform to many different voices (a fact that can easily be verified with a quick look at the staff and Directors chosen to serve the members of Local 174). “Diversity makes us all better, deeper, and more interesting people. Our different lived experiences give us different insights and more creative solutions to problems,” Hicks says. “We have never had an AGC Bargaining Committee that looked like this one, and seeing them in action, I can already tell that these elected rank-and-file Committee members are absolutely the best ones for the job and they’ll bring back a better contract than these members have ever had.”
“I’d especially like to thank Patrick Polk for agreeing to be interviewed for this story, and more than that, I’d like to thank him for his many years as a loyal Local 174 member and shop steward.”
Founded in 1909, Teamsters Local 174 represents 8,600 working men and women in Seattle and the surrounding areas. “Like” us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TeamstersLocal174.