n Trust is that trans staff can self-identity into any changing room they choose. The women were offered a small office in which to change and keep their clothes (initially on the floor) but it has no loos or showers and opens straight on to a corridor so, as Lockey puts it, “if you’re not careful, everyone gets an eyeful”.
This policy is pure Stonewall playbook, part of the trans “toolkit” of measures it has long insisted every institution or company adopts, especially the rule that it is unhappy women who must be banished from their own facilities rather than — as the nurses have requested — a dignified third space being found for a trans person.
When the nurses lodged their complaint, Lockey contacted Unison for advice but received no answer. Other women were members of the Royal College of Nursing which sent a rep to a meeting with HR, but only as an observer. Around 25 nurses attended, some coming in from days off, but their worries were wafted away by an HR official who said she’d gladly change with men as she was “ex-forces”. The nurses, including the sexual abuse survivor, were told to “broaden their outlook”.
Snubbed by their unions, the women formed their own group, the Darlington Nursing Union, both to organise for their pending legal action and to demand private facilities for women in all professions. With such contempt for female members, it’s little wonder the trade union movement is haemorrhaging women, with 83,000 leaving last year alone.
After Steve North’s outburst I called Unison. Will it defend women members compelled by management to undress with trans-identifying males? “The union is not involved in the [Darlington] case,” said a statement, “and it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to comment.” A cowardly swerve. The truth is its policy states “trans people are entitled to use single-sex facilities in accordance with their gender identity”. So why won’t Unison defend it?
An official told me, with some exasperation, that North was “elected by a very small group of activists, whose views don’t reflect those of the wider membership”. No kidding. The Darlington nurses, like most members, loyally paid their subs but rarely attended meetings, let alone drafted motions or stood as conference delegates. It is activists, with the most extreme ideological agenda, who formulate policy. “And the first thing we knew about it,” Lockey says, “is when it smacked us in the face.”
Since trans self-ID became a hot issue, debate within unions has been stifled. Feminists arguing it impinges on women’s rights were vilified and censured. At the Scottish Labour conference in February, the GMB, Unite and Unison all refused to support a motion acknowledging the “principle of women’s sex-based rights”. Even a trans woman, Debbie Hayton, was driven from office in the NASUWT for holding gender-critical views.
The phrase "union dinosaurs" comes to mind. The battling trade unions of old, campaigning against the excesses of a rampant Victorian capitalism, have long since atrophied into stale depositories of a parody "working class" male entitlement.
Just when you think the gender war is over, women have to battle for the most basic right: to undress in their workplace without being watched by a man.
Leave a Reply