 Openly gay Bill Olwell became an international vice president of the Retail Clerks International Union (RCIU) in 1972, and was later elected to a similar position with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) in 1986 after the RCIU merged with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters to form the UFCW.The first public endorsement of LGBT rights by an American labor union, however, did not occur until 1970, after the Stonewall Rebellion.In that year, the executive council of the American Federation of Teachers passed a resolution which denounced discrimination against teachers solely because the individual was a homosexual.