Know Your Rights

Resources for trans, non-binary &
gender-nonconforming media workers

Amid increasing threats to LGBTQIA+ rights, it’s crucial for trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive media workers to equip ourselves with guidance around navigating our workplaces, knowing our rights, and pushing for better labor conditions. Following FSP-NWU’s co-hosted event with the Trans Journalists Association in October 2024, our members have compiled the following resources to support ourselves and each other. Know of a resource we should add? Reach out: freelance.solidarity.project@gmail.com

Building solidarity

Editorial guidance 

Workplace rights and legal resources

  • Workplace Resources Guide
    • TJA’s Workplace Resources Guide compiles tools from the journalism industry, LGBTQ+ organizations, legal experts, and security advisors. The guide addresses newsroom leaders who may be seeking to support trans employees or contractors as well as workers who may need resources to present to their manager. 
    • It also contains numerous do-it-yourself toolkits for journalists.
  • Know Your Rights Guides for Transgender and Non-binary Workers (A Better Balance x Transgender Law Center)
    • These guides, created in collaboration with Transgender Law Center, are designed to support transgender and non-binary workers in knowing and exercising your rights at work when it comes to caring for yourself and the people you love. 
    • The guides outline common scenarios that transgender and non-binary individuals may experience, including the need to take leave to recover from gender-affirming surgery and other medical care, bond with a new child, or take care of chosen family and other loved ones. 
    • They also provide information about receiving an accommodation at work during pregnancy or after giving birth, and accessing a private space to pump milk at work. Finally, they address what to do if you have experienced retaliation or your rights have been violated. 
  • Holistic Safety Guide
    • This guide is compiled by TJA members and partners sharing our best practices for keeping ourselves and our data safe online and while reporting in person. Additional resources and support were provided by Aegis Safety Alliance (Jen Byers and Tara Pixley) funded through the 2024 Knight Election Hub Urgent Care project.
    • Note: Freelancers can request a collective overview of the risk assessment for an assignment to open conversation on the newsroom’s duty of care. TJA includes a Risk Assessment Assignment Checklist in their guide. This can function as a quick checklist for every assignment, you can sit down with your editor or reporting team to review and clarify expectations, safety needs, and preparation for potential risks.
  • A Better Balance’s Workplace Rights Hub: https://www.abetterbalance.org/know-your-rights
  • Transgender Law Center Resources 
  • Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE) (formerly TLDEF and NCTE before they merged in 2024) 
  • “How the Impact of Bostock v. Clayton County on LGBTQ Rights Continues to Expand” (ACLU)
  • Legal Aid at Work: Transgender and Nonbinary Workers Toolkit
  • Transgender Law Center

Digital safety

Material resources

  • Black Journalists Therapy Relief Fund
    • Note: due to current limitations of the IWMF’s resources, at this time IWMF does not have the capacity to provide emergency assistance. They are actively fundraising to support this program long-term, and you can support them here
  • Urgent Action Fund 
    • Provides fast, flexible support to women, trans and non-binary activists so that they can respond to unexpected risks

Key takeaways from October 2024 “Know Your Rights” event

Note: the following quotes have been lightly edited for clarity

  • “Freelancers are often in a particularly precarious situation due to isolation from coworkers, lack of legal protections. That’s why joining together as we did on the NYT letter campaign, and standing together with staffers, is one way to push for better working conditions for everyone.” – Eric Thurm, NWU Campaigns Coordinator and National Officer-at-Large
  • “As a freelancer, you often have less resources at your disposal to speak up and fight against various grievances [with legal protections]. That’s why collective organizing projects like the NYT letter, along with legislation like Freelance Isn’t Free — in terms of ensuring basic protections such as timely payment and the right to a written contract — are crucial.” – Riley Roliff, freelance journalist and researcher
  • “The most valuable piece of advice [I’ve] received as far as organizing around workplace issues: Remember, there are many more protections if you are doing anything with any other people. That can literally mean one other person. Also: Rules around protected concerted activity apply whether or not your workplace is unionized!” – Alma Avalle,  member-at-Large, Condé Nast Union; 3rd Vice President, NewsGuild of New York
  • “Care work is about being able to take care of both ourselves and our loved ones. It’s aiming for laws to include an expansive definition of family. As Alma was saying earlier, these protections are not just for trans people — they’re for anyone whose family expands beyond ‘nuclear family’ definitions/structures.” – Jesse Workman,  senior staff attorney at A Better Balance

How to stay in touch with panelists and partner organizations

  • Moderator, Tat Bellamy-Walker (he/they), program Manager, Digital Safety Training & Resources, PEN America | Cofounder of TJA’s Peer Career Network
    • Twitter: @bell_tati
  • Intro to FSP-NWU, Eric Thurm (he/they), NWU Campaigns Coordinator and National Officer-at-Large, as well as a co-author/organizer of the 2023 contributors’ open letter to the New York Times
    • Twitter: @EricThurm | IG: @ethu22
  • Riley Roliff (she/her), freelance journalist/researcher focused on the intersections between LGBTQ+ rights, the labor movement, and the U.S. prison system
    • Twitter: @rileyroliff
  • Alma Avalle (she/her), member-at-Large, Condé Nast Union; 3rd Vice President, NewsGuild of New York
    • Twitter: @goodbyealma | IG: @alma.avalle
  • Jesse Workman (they/them), senior staff attorney at A Better Balance, where they work at the local, state, and federal levels to advance inclusive paid family and medical leave
    • Twitter: A Better Balance (@ABetterBalance) | IG: @ a_better_balance
  • The National Writers Union’s Freelance Solidarity Project
    • Twitter: @fsp_nwu | IG: @fsp_nwu
  • Trans Journalists Association
    • Twitter: @TransJA | IG: @transjournalists