Take Action on TUC Motion 17!

Write to your General Secretary

Delegates at the Trades Union Congress this week voted to support a motion committing the organisation (and by implication its affiliate unions) to campaign against the EHRC code, which provides guidance on the Equality Act for services, organisations and associations. We wrote a blog about this last week, which you can read here: Debating the EHRC Code of Practice at This Year’s TUC Congress.

The motion proposes a serious and substantial change to the legal rights of women and girls and yet no mention is made of this in the motion.

The FiLiA Trade Union Women’s Network has produced a short model letter [text below] for union members to send to General Secretaries, which asks five key questions.

If you are a member of a union, please consider sending this letter to your General Secretary. Just copy and paste the text and send it to your General Secretary either by email or post.

As a member of a union, you have a right to ask for an explanation of union actions, so you should expect your General Secretary, or someone delegated by her/him, to respond to your letter.

You will need to supply your name and membership number to be confident of a reply.

Most unions have a generic email formulation, so it should be straightforward for you to work out the email address for your general secretary if you don’t know it. Or you could send it to the general information or contact email with ‘ATTENTION General Secretary’ in the subject line, with a brief preamble asking the recipient to forward.

Alternatively, you may prefer to print the letter and send it by post. Make sure you include a return address for a reply.

General contact details for all TUC-affiliated unions are available here.

Please complete this short survey to let us know you have sent your letter and the name of your union.

We would like to publish a collection of any responses from unions, so please email us a copy of what you receive if you are happy for us to share. We would not share any of your personal details. Email your response to tuwomen@filia.org.uk.

Make sure women’s voices are heard in your union.

Please share this with other union members.

Sisterhood and Solidarity,
FiLiA Trade Union Women’s Network.

TUC Motion 17: MODEL LETTER
Dear [name of General Secretary*],
Motion 17 Oppose the EHRC Code of Practice (Services, Public Functions and Associations)
This TUC motion proposes a serious and substantial change to the legal rights of women and girls and yet no mention is made of this in the motion.
Following the decision of Congress 2026 to support this motion, please could you respond to the following questions:
1. Did the [name of Union*] delegation support this motion?
2. If so, on what basis did the delegation decide to do this?
3. Does the Union accept that, for reasons of privacy, dignity and safety, biological women members are legally entitled to single-sex provision of changing rooms, rape crisis services, domestic abuse refuges, intimate personal care, prisons etc?
4. Does the Union support the provision of these services, as well as the other exceptions in the Equality Act, intended to help women challenge the endemic social, political and economic discrimination and oppression we face?
5. Is the Union proposing to campaign to change the law to remove these rights?
I look forward to hearing your response.
Yours sincerely,
[Name*]
[Union Membership Number*]
*Fill in the relevant details here.