Trade Unions and the EHRC Code of Practice
By Lily Macleod
It is over a year since we celebrated an historic victory for women in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers. This blog reviews the most recent misguided attempts by Britain’s trade unions to undermine the Equality Act 2010 and argues why working-class women must ‘take back control’ of their own trade union movement.
On 21st May, Bridget Phillipson finally laid the EHRC Code of Practice before Parliament, after a delay of more than eight months. Since then, several unions, along with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), have doubled down on their opposition to the Supreme Court ruling and issued statements to that effect.
Common themes across these statements are:
No mention at all of women
An exclusive concern with trans and non-binary people
Claims the Code of Practice is impractical and creates confusion and uncertainty
A state of denial that the Code reflects the law, as it has been for 50 years
No acceptance that transgender rights are unchanged by the Supreme Court ruling and that the ruling itself explicitly reaffirms these
Misrepresentations and misunderstandings of the ruling
A misconception that the Code applies to workplaces (though not by all unions).
These complaints about the Code are disingenuous. These unions wrongfully misled their trans members into believing they could identify into opposite sex facilities and services, which was a misinterpretation of the law. Now they are stoking needless fears amongst their trans members, in order to try and get it changed.
Britain’s largest union, UNISON (78% women members), has launched a ‘Change the Law’ campaign to have the Equality Act amended to redefine ‘women’ and ‘sex’ on the basis of self-declared identity. At UNISON’s national conference in June, its general secretary, Andrea Egan, said:
‘The Supreme Court ruling was wrong. And the recent EHRC guidance is wrong all over again. We have to ensure that we lobby MPs hard to reject it. And we will keep fighting to change this unworkable, unjust legislation. Our movement has never just sat down and accepted unjust laws. We fight them. And that's what we're going to do with this.’
Egan’s statement is in fact a mirror image of the Supreme Court ruling. In For Women Scotland, the judges determined the opposite, saying that if ‘sex’ meant certificated sex, based on gender identity, then the Equality Act provisions for single sex services and facilities would be rendered not just unworkable, but ‘impractical, anomalous and illogical’. This is why the Scottish Government lost the case. But it is what UNISON seeks to achieve.
The impact on UNISON’s women members of redefining ‘sex’ is apparently of no concern. Nor is the impact on its lesbian and gay members, given the importance of the Supreme Court ruling for the definition of sexual orientation. The hierarchy of concerns is clear. In her speech, Egan located her personal connection to these matters as her role as ‘the proud auntie to a trans-nephew’ and her condemnation of the ‘tsunami of hatred facing trans people’ in the aftermath of the ruling.
Unite the Union’s statement on the EHRC code repeats its long-held policy position, that ‘trans women are women, trans men are men, and our non-binary colleagues must have full legal recognition.’ Unite reassures members that it will be taking time to review the Code of Practice, saying ‘we have significant concerns about its practical impact on our trans and non-binary members.’ The ruling was more than a year ago, why take even more time? The EHRC clarified last year that organisations should already be complying with the law and should not wait for the Code of Practice to do so.
Unite’s concerns are echoed by the general union GMB, which says its review of the Code will involve members ‘with lived experience’. The GMB says the Code’s ‘trans exclusionary definition of women’ will create fear and worry for its trans and non-binary members. Its public statement emphasises the GMB’s continued commitment to support and campaign alongside the trans community and calls upon Bridget Phillipson to ‘use her role to clarify the intention of the Equality Act 2010 to be trans inclusive so that there is no further need for legal uncertainty’.
The 1st June statement from the Fire Brigades Union,¹ claims the EHRC Code of Practice ‘introduces confusion and uncertainty into workplaces already under strain’. It implies the Code exposes trans people to exclusion and discrimination and that it is ‘impractical and risks deepening division’. Their statement avoids any mention of the dreaded ‘W-word’ (you know, the word for 10% of frontline firefighters) but mentions ‘trans’ four times and expresses solidarity with non-binary and gender diverse members. It describes the Code as ‘minimum requirements’ which employers should ‘go beyond’.
Civil service union PCS at least avoids hyperbolic language in its statement, which focuses on the need for careful implementation. However, it still centres LGBT+ members, and ignores women and the fact the Code is not for workplaces.
The TUC, the representative body of the trade union movement, is 6.5 million members strong. Its statement reflects its opposition to the Supreme Court ruling. ‘Dignity at work is not a limited resource’ it says grandly. ‘Women’s rights to safety, respect and equality are fundamental – and so are the rights of trans people.’ But in calling for trans lives to be ‘fully liveable in practice – including self-declaration’, the TUC, even now, denies the conflict of rights the Supreme Court was asked to address and doubles down on its opposition to the ruling.
A public statement from the STUC, issued in the name of its LGBT+ Committee, says the Code is ‘discriminatory and unworkable’, restricts the rights of transpeople and will prevent them from leading a normal life. By now it’s clear that a ‘normal life’ is the new code for accessing opposite sex services and facilities.
Operation Change the Law
The degree of cross union coordination and organisation by trans and LGBT+ lobby groups to change the Equality Act is transparent. TUC resolutions commit it to continuing support for the Trade Unions for Trans and Non-Binary Rights Network. Unite the Union’s statement says it is ‘working alongside other trade unions to raise our concerns with parliamentary colleagues’.
For now, their focus is on getting MPs to reject the EHRC Code of Practice. Labour MP Nadia Whittome’s Early Day Motion to this effect has (to date) been signed by 158 cross party MPs. Whittome, an activist trans ally, is an executive member of the Trade Union Group of Labour MPs (Labour Unions), which represents the party’s 11 trade union affiliates. It is one vehicle available to the largest unions, UNISON, Unite and GMB, to take their pro-gender identity ideology policies into the Labour Party and collectively push for a change in both party policy and the law. Labour signatories of the EDM include the Socialist Group of MPs and trade union sponsored Labour MPs and office-bearers within Labour Unions, including its national chair, Ian Lavery MP.
Of course, the position of the trade union movement is in conflict with that of the Labour Government on women’s sex-based rights. The ruling must be implemented across the NHS and other sectors for which national and local government are responsible, and trade unions are partners in that implementation.
We might ask whether Labour under a future Andy Burnham leadership would heed the lessons from the SNP Scottish Government, which has just lost another landmark legal case to For Women Scotland, on men in women’s prisons. A legal case brought because of the SNP’s refusal to implement the ruling. We will see. Burnham’s instinct during the Makerfield by-election to U-turn on earlier comments and back the Supreme Court ruling shows he can read the room but can he be trusted?
What Is To Be Done?
Feminists within the trade union and labour movement have worked hard in extremely difficult circumstances to challenge the grip of gender identity ideology and assert women’s sex-based rights. It has been commonplace for individual women to be ostracised, made the subject of complaints and disciplinary actions, and forced out of their positions. A strong motivator for women continuing the fight is the understanding that if you create a vacuum, the Right will fill it. This is exactly what we are watching unfold, in real time, and with depressing consequences not least for the women’s movement.
These are dangerous times and the trade unions outright opposition to common sense rights essential for the privacy, dignity, safety and fairness of women and girls undermines its credibility. And this at the very moment when newly elected national Reform politicians in Scotland and Wales are joining Reform councillors in England in exploiting women’s interests.
Alongside them are a myriad of far right, racist forces and influencers using fake safety concerns for women and children to provoke racist violence, with Black and Muslim women and girls the most easily identifiable targets for this. A Reform government would be disastrous for women, especially working-class women, and feminists must oppose the misogynistic identity politics of the Right and the Left.
Reform UK has announced it will scrap the Equality Act 2010 along with the Labour Government’s new Employment Rights Act 2025, which stands to benefit millions of women workers. In its place Reform says it will introduce a ‘Women and Motherhood Protection Act’, protecting women during pregnancy and early motherhood while maintaining equal pay laws (in some form) and protections against sex discrimination.
The TUC has rightly attacked the reactionary ultra-conservative values behind Reform’s plans – describing them as a ‘galling and offensive’ attempt to turn the clock back on women’s lives. But the TUC’s pronouncement that Reform ‘can never be trusted on women’s rights’ is an act of stunning hypocrisy.
It’s easy to put the current situation down simply to trade unions being male dominated but reality is complex and to understand this we must also address the role, beliefs and behaviour of women within the trade unions, both lay activists and full-time officials.
Women are the majority (57%) of Britain’s 6.5 million trade union members. One in four women workers are in a union (compared to fewer than one in five men). But in the public sector, where women’s employment is concentrated, the proportion of female members of individual trade unions is as high as 80%. Nearly half of all TUC affiliated unions are led by women, including five of the ten largest unions (UNISON, Unite, UCU, PCS and USDAW). Both the Welsh and Scottish TUCs have women leaders, and until fairly recently so did the TUC. Female trade union organisers were a rarity 40 years ago. Not so today. Some of the anti-EHRC code statements from trade unions, for example Unite’s, are jointly issued in the name of their national women’s committees. There is nothing exceptional here. Women’s complicity is a common feature of captured institutions, as is the silencing of women’s dissent through internal cultures of harassment and intimidation. Trade unions are no different. And they have been particularly vulnerable to capture because of the role of national, regional and local LGBTQI+ committees in policy making. These provided the machinery for installing ‘self-ID’ policies and then promoting these through trade union education and political campaigns.
The only way forward is to match the level of coordination and organisation deployed against women’s rights. At an institutional level trade unions may be actively choosing to bite the hand that feeds them. But women cut off their own hands if they abandon trade unions and leave the field of play.
Since the banking crash of 2008, we have endured 15 years of austerity politics – unprecedented cuts to public spending which have caused a rapid escalation of class inequality and a drop in life expectancy. These policies have had greatest impact on working-class women and particularly Black and minoritised women. And on their children. The current drive to war and planned budget increases on warfare are set to turbo-charge these cuts. Trade unions remain critically important for defending and advancing women’s interests at work and are the frontline of protecting our welfare system and the public services on which we depend. In workplaces across the country it is women trade unionists, for example, in our schools and hospitals, who are organising and leading struggles. In the two weeks following the Code of Practice being laid before Parliament, as unions were issuing their statements of opposition, women trade unionists were taking action for fairer visa rules in social care, to save jobs and courses in universities and to win better staffing and resources to support pupils with additional support needs in schools.
It is trade union reps active at branch and regional level of their unions who take part in the democratic policy making processes of trade unions. However, policies can only be changed through participation, and that means supporting more women trade members into activism at all levels and building our networks.
Join FiLiA’s Trade Union Women’s Network here.
In the words of Bob Crow, former leader of the RMT union, ‘If you fight you won’t always win, but if you don’t fight you will always lose.’
See Fire Brigade’s Union posts on 1st June 2026 on X and Instagram.