The United Auto Workers in its latest proposed contract with Ford will protect workers from discrimination based on those workers’ gender identities or expressions, a potentially sweeping measure for a normally conservative industry.

According to the contract, the proposed agreement would protect any employee regardless of “race, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, union activity, religion, or … any employee with disabilities.”

The UAW’s contract with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles included for the first time language that covered gender identity for those workers. (Read More…)

Included in the United Auto Workers latest round of negotiations was language that protected workers at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles from discrimination based on gender identity.

“During this round of bargaining the union expressed the importance of the parties both maintaining and strengthening policies that ensure the equal treatment of all employees,” the union wrote in its white paper to members.

Michigan and Ohio do not protect workers from discrimination based on gender identity, according to the ACLU. Only Illinois, where FCA currently builds the Dodge Dart, Jeep Compass and Patriot at its Belvidere plant, has a law that protects workers from gender-identity discrimination.  (Read More…)