Trans liberation is worker liberation – resource bank

Trade unions are getting involved in the fight against transphobia. rs21 members have put together a resource bank for rank and file workplace organising.

EHRC consultation process

The consulation closes on Monday 30 June

• Fill out the consultation survey here. Use the template reply prepared by a lawyer and political activist to help.
• More information on the EHRC consultation here via TransActual.
• Any individual or group can submit a response to the consultation. The more responses, the more influence.
• Note that the consultation currently open is for services, public functions and associations. A second consultation is expected on guidelines for employers.

Legal briefings and explainers

• Know Your Rights – TransActual
• Trans inclusion after the Supreme Court decision: FAQs | Good Law Project
• Political analysis of the legal judgement: When law becomes the means of oppression
• Maximising trans inclusion after the Supreme Court Judgment — Gendered Intelligence 

Organising with your colleagues

• Suss out what people think with a few 1-on-1 conversations
• If there’s enough support, create a petition or open letter for people to sign saying that you aren’t going to police gender in your workplace. If possible, ask supportive people to sign it first – that builds up momentum.
• If you’ve got a committed group of colleagues, could you organise group discussions, maybe at lunch, to share pro-trans views and campaigning news? If it’s sunny, could you have a picnic for trans-supportive people?
• Could you organise a discussion meeting? Think about this carefully before you take the plunge. If you have transphobic colleagues, you don’t want to give them a platform, and you want any trans colleagues to come out of a meeting feeling empowered, not humiliated. At the very least, get everyone participating to agree that they will speak respectfully about trans people and other oppressed groups.
• Develop a workplace policy with your colleagues – you could base this on the model policy developed by UNISON – and call on management to adopt it.
• If your organisation provides services, your trans inclusion policy should include trans service users – see this example.
• Build awareness and consensus. Use items like badges, lapel pins, stickers, posters and mugs to send the message to colleagues, managers and service users that you’re committed to trans inclusion. Stonewall, Mermaids and Transactual all have online shops. Check out stalls at your local Pride.

Work with LGBTQ+ networks, but make clear you think unions are more effective

• In some workplaces, employers have created equality networks, which they control. They are intended to pink-wash employers – to make them look good on LGBTQ+ issues – and promote feelings of inclusion, but without seriously challenging oppressive policies and practices.
• The growth of officially approved transphobia – such as the Supreme Court judgement – will create problems for employer-sponsored networks. Do the employers side with their trans employees, or do they accept official guidelines?
• We should work with LGBTQ+ networks wherever possible. However, we think it’s more effective for workers and oppressed people to organise independently of the employer. So, while working with networks – and taking care that we aren’t seen by LGBTQ+ colleagues to be attacking ‘their’ network – we think that unions and their equality structures are a better option.

Organising with your union comrades

• If there’s a union at your workplace, join it and encourage your colleagues to join as well.
• Find out who your rep is – look for union posters or noticeboards, a union website or emails – and get in touch with them.
• If there isn’t a rep, become one! Speak to your union branch or regional staff officer. If you’ve not done anything like this before, training should be available.
• Speak and propose motions at meetings, AGMs, and conferences of your branch and union. Here are some motions passed by union conferences and branches. You can base your motions on these, but you’ll need to remove and add parts to make it appropriate for your union/workplace.
  • Greater Manchester Transport UNISON
  • BECTU motion (pages 1 and 2)
• Reach out to the union’s LGBTQ+ network to see what they’re doing already and how you can help.
• Attend strike pickets with trans lib flags – you can find details of current strikes on Strike Map.

Organising in your community

• Get your union branch to donate to trans and trans-inclusive feminist orgs near you.
• Check out this guide on the different ways you can support the trans community, whether you’ve only got ten minutes, can spend an hour or can commit to longer.

Networks and info for trans liberation

• The TUC runs a Trade Unions For Trans Rights campaigning network – sign up here for updates.
• Trade Unionists for Trans Rights (confusingly not the TUC!) has lots of WhatsApp discussion groups for different unions and regions, links here.
• Troublemakers At Work is a network for rank and file workers that hosts online meetings and an annual conference, and is trans inclusive
• rs21 has produced Fighting transphobia: a practical and theoretical guide

We’ll add more resources as they become available. If you know of useful resources, email us.