The Agitator column
April’s Supreme Court ruling and the subsequent interventions by Equality and Human Rights Commission Chair Lady Falkner and Women and Equalities Minister Briget Phillipson prompted a flurry of activity by trade unionists.
While thousands of rank and file members were contacting trans rights groups, drawing up leaflets and organising protests, their leaders were busy consulting lawyers on how to comply with the Court’s reactionary ruling, before its implications are fully understood; already watering down trans rights pledges on their webpages.
Unite and Unison, two of the most pro-trans unions up to now, have quickly announced the ‘suspension’ of ‘trans ally’ training and their intention to ‘wait for’ the EHRC to issue guidelines.
What’s kind of an ‘ally’ runs for cover at the first the prospect of a fight? Clearly these fair weather friends will bend the knee to any reactionary court ruling as soon as it’s announced.
Workplace resistance
Organising a defence of our trans siblings will be harder without the support of our union leaderships. There is an important battle underway against the positions taken by general secretaries and NECs, to force them to reinstate our unions’ pro-trans positions and organise resistance to the Supreme Court ruling.
In the meantime, however, employers are re-writing policies and restrictions on bathroom use and humiliating demands to produce birth certificates or out oneself as trans are coming fast. While we struggle nationally to force our leaders to fight, we have no choice but to engage in a defensive struggle, employer by employer, for trans rights.
Members meetings in response to, or in anticipation of, changes to company policy will help to mobilise members, and also argue the importance of standing together to defend trans colleagues.
Trade unions, like any labour movement organisation, should allow oppressed groups to caucus to discuss issues of their oppression. We should organise women’s caucuses (naturally including trans women!) and LGBT+ caucuses, with a view to bringing the collective strength of those oppressed groups behind the union, generating ideas for resistance and drawing new activists into the local leadership of the union. We should expect transphobic views to be raised, including in women’s and LGBT+ caucuses and be prepared to challenge them.
Then, united as a workforce, including the men, the union should present their solution to management as the only one acceptable to those who use spaces such as toilets, showers and changing facilities.
If the bosses refuse to comply or try to discipline anyone, then workers should down tools. No equality, no work. And demand the backing of our union leaders, including a ballot for further action.
This would represent a limited form of workers’ control. A development the workforce can build on by seeking to exercise workers’ control over wider aspects of production and the workplace.