‘It’s better than a dig in the face’: LGBT employees on how the workplace became more accepting

“I didn’t kiss her, kiss her,” says Donna McAnallen now, still, it seems, with a mix of bemusement and indignation all these years later.

“I kissed her on the cheek as she was leaving, a sort of ‘goodbye love’.”

McAnallen is describing the incident that led to her dismissal from Brookfield Holiday Village in Cork where she worked as a fitness instructor and lifeguard in 1993.

The other person was her ex, the Belfast woman says, with whom she was still on good terms. The kiss would have been nothing remotely out of the ordinary but for the fact the recipient was a woman too.

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“The boss called me in and said: ‘Sorry Donna, but it’s been alleged that you kissed somebody in the changing rooms. I am going to have to let you go,’” says McAnallen, speaking ahead of the 50th anniversary of the first Dublin Pride parade this weekend.

She was young then, she says now from her home in Liverpool, and took it in her stride because these sorts of incidents happened to gay people.

Later, encouraged by others, she took a case for unfair dismissal and won a victory of sorts: the Labour Court said she had been unfairly treated but found there was nothing in legislation at the time to prevent her employer discriminating against her on grounds of sexual orientation.

[ Defence Forces, Courts Service asked to withdraw from Pride parades after Cathal Crotty suspended sentence ]

Within a couple months, that would change with an amendment to the Unfair Dismissals Act and – five years later – protections were copper-fastened with the Employment Equality Act.

The year McAnallen lost her job about 500 people walked in the Pride parade in Dublin, says Kieran Rose, a lifelong trade unionist and activist with the Cork Gay Collective, the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network and a long list of other organisations.

At this weekend’s Pride parade, according to Pride festival director, Jed Dowling, there will be an estimated 100,000 when everyone, including spectators, are counted.

“The parade itself is pretty big; about 15,000 are registered, and then people turn up,” he says. “That’s the great thing ... once we turn off O’Connell Street and on to the quays, anyone can jump in.”

Perhaps 5,000 people will be participating as part of groups affiliated to about 100 companies who support in the event, he suggests.

That list grows longer and more diverse each year, with Dowling mentioning the likes of Sisk and Glenveagh from the construction sector and businesses of almost every type now displaying their support for the cause around this time of year.

One of the many firms to encourage and support participation by its employees is Citigroup, the banking multinational that employs 2,500 in the country and has been involved with Pride for more than a decade.

“There’s a lot of excitement around the participation in the parade,” says Wayne Murphy an anti-money-laundering specialist who is one of the main organisers of the company’s Pride group, “and that energy carries into the work we do through the rest of the year.”

[ Una Mullally: I had the luxury for a few years to not have to question holding my wife’s hand on the street ]

There are about 15 people involved on the organising side of things, he says, and there is considerable buy-in from both the company and colleagues.

“There are things such as fireside chats, promoting individual stories, promoting a better understanding of topics like supporting our LGBTQ+ colleagues, family members and information sessions on the history and journey of Pride,” he says.

Murphy has worked with the firm for 13 years and says the culture there was an important factor for him as he weighed up where to work.

“I was always looking at organisations to see how inclusive they were to LGBTQ+, to potential employees, and I think the Citi just stood out in terms of the safe, inclusive environment they offered,” he says.

This is typical of why companies are involved, says Dowling. Just before the pandemic, he says, the organisers of Pride wanted to find out a little more about why firms participated and how authentic it all was.

They established Pride at Work, which, with the help of a grant of €8,000 from the Department of Equality at the start of the pandemic, morphed into a semi-independent training unit that delivered about 300 in-person and online sessions last year.

“It actually ended up being really successful,” he says. “A lot of the larger companies, they have equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policies and groups, and they’re all looking for activities, they are looking for learning experiences, they’re looking for things to make their jobs more meaningful.

“They want to have a more inclusive workplace because there is a huge amount of research that shows more diversity in a workplace is better for the organisation. So this is all very appealing to employers from the standpoint of recruitment and retention.”

It is all a far cry from the Ireland of the 1970s and 1980s, in which Rose started his working life as a planner, initially on six-month contracts with Cork County Council.

When David Norris sought to challenge the constitutionality of certain provisions relating to homosexuality in the Offences Against the State Act, 1861, and Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, the then chief justice, Tom O’Higgins, gave a sense of establishment attitudes when the case reached the Supreme Court, which held against Norris by a majority of three to two.

“Such conduct is, of course, morally wrong,” he said in 1983, “and has been so regarded by mankind through the centuries.

“It cannot be said of it, however, as the plaintiff seeks to say, that no harm is done if it is conducted in private by consenting males. Very serious harm may in fact be involved. Such conduct, although carried on with full consent, may lead a mildly homosexually orientated person into a way of life from which he may never recover.”

Against that sort of backdrop, Rose recalls telling his mother he was going to come out in a radio interview and her reaction being: “What about your good job?”

His trade union, the Local Government and Public Services Union – now part of Fórsa, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the wider movement – provided early and important support for change, he says.

“Teachers were particularly vulnerable, and the medical profession was very Catholic and conservative back then,” he says. “And when people were discriminated against or fired for being gay, they tended to just go away because they didn’t want the attention.”

[ Intercom’s Pride row shows the fickleness of corporate allegiance to LGBTQI+ causes ]

He recalls a directive from the Department of Finance, which oversaw human resources for the civil service, issued in 1988 after talks with unions as having been a significant milestone.

“It said discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or medical condition, which was effectively HIV-Aids, would not be tolerated, which was an amazing thing because we were illegal at the time,” says Rose. “But that spread to all the public service and from there to the semis states.”

The private sector environment, he says, always depended more on the attitude of owners, boards or managers, many of whom saw the value of productive workers and environments even then.

Forty one years on, McAnallen is adamant there is still more to be done and the 54 cases taken to the Workplace Relations Commission last year under the Employment Equality Acts on the basis of sexual orientation is evidence of the road still to be travelled.

The progress to date has been “phenomenal”, says Rose, with marriage equality a more obvious example even than the changes in workplace attitudes.

“You wouldn’t want to be naive, of course,” he says of some of the motivations involved, “but you’d be foolish to turn your nose. It’s better than a dig in the face.”

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