Trade Unions, Women and Privacy
Excellent from Janice Turner on the Darlington nurses and the failure of unions to represent and protect women workers. https://t.co/zP0sWozmSw
— Kate (@campervanwoman) November 2, 2024
Unison failed to stand up for low paid women members in the fight for equal pay - they were shamed into action.
So maybe a 'class action' is the way for women to fight for privacy at work - a joint action against rogue employers and any unions who refuse to protect their members?
Brave nurses just want the right to privacy
Darlington nursing staff didn’t have views on ‘trans debate’, then a biologically male colleague used their changing room
By Janice Turner - The Times
On Wednesday Lisa Lockey cancelled her Unison membership. Starting as a teenage trainee nurse, she’d paid her union dues (latterly £11.50 a month) out of her modest salary for 33 years. But a public statement by the Unison president Steve North gave her no choice but to quit.
Lockey, 51, is one of five Darlington nurses in dispute with their NHS trust over its policy of allowing a trans-identified male colleague to use female changing rooms. When the health secretary, Wes Streeting, heard they were suing for sexual harassment and sex discrimination he was “horrified” and offered to meet them. Last week they travelled to London where he heard their concerns, including those of a nurse who has PTSD after being sexually abused as a child.
This meeting incensed North. It was “deeply concerning”, he tweeted, “that Wes Streeting appears to be once again pandering to anti-trans bigotry”. Three quarters of the workers North represents are female, yet here he castigates a Labour minister for listening to women, including some of his own members
After reporting this debate for seven years, I’d begun to think the case for female spaces was made. (Even Labour gives it lip service now.) But the Darlington nurses reveal how disdain for women’s rights is hard-baked into our public institutions. Whether you are a nurse, supermarket worker, cleaner or policewoman, your employer can deny you privacy, safety and dignity — and your union may not just fail to defend you, but side with your boss.
None of the Darlington nurses had a view on the “trans debate” until last August: they were too busy caring for patients or their own families. Then a male theatre nurse who calls himself Rose began using the female facilities where they change before and after a shift. Rose has not transitioned. He wears men’s clothes and apart from long hair he presents wholly as male, nor, say his colleagues, does he take hormones because he and his girlfriend are trying to conceive. Parading around in boxer shorts, staring at nurses in their bras and asking one woman repeatedly “are you going to get undressed yet?”, Rose made nurses feel so uncomfortable some started changing in the disabled toilet.
But when they complained to management they learnt that the policy of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation 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.
A vicious, vengeful trans lobby, which dubs opponents bigots, has frightened many into silence. The Darlington nurses were always whispering in hospital kitchens with distressed colleagues too fearful to go public. But they are determined neither to resign from jobs they love, nor to back down. Their tribunal case, which has a preliminary hearing this month, could set a major precedent. They also have a strong ally in Streeting, Labour’s least tribal thinker, who is determined to unravel NHS policy at source. Introduced by stealth it has turned loyal, hard-working nurses into unlikely campaigners.
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.
On Wednesday Lisa Lockey cancelled her Unison membership. Starting as a teenage trainee nurse, she’d paid her union dues (latterly £11.50 a month) out of her modest salary for 33 years. But a public statement by the Unison president Steve North gave her no choice but to quit.
Lockey, 51, is one of five Darlington nurses in dispute with their NHS trust over its policy of allowing a trans-identified male colleague to use female changing rooms. When the health secretary, Wes Streeting, heard they were suing for sexual harassment and sex discrimination he was “horrified” and offered to meet them. Last week they travelled to London where he heard their concerns, including those of a nurse who has PTSD after being sexually abused as a child.
This meeting incensed North. It was “deeply concerning”, he tweeted, “that Wes Streeting appears to be once again pandering to anti-trans bigotry”. Three quarters of the workers North represents are female, yet here he castigates a Labour minister for listening to women, including some of his own members
After reporting this debate for seven years, I’d begun to think the case for female spaces was made. (Even Labour gives it lip service now.) But the Darlington nurses reveal how disdain for women’s rights is hard-baked into our public institutions. Whether you are a nurse, supermarket worker, cleaner or policewoman, your employer can deny you privacy, safety and dignity — and your union may not just fail to defend you, but side with your boss.
None of the Darlington nurses had a view on the “trans debate” until last August: they were too busy caring for patients or their own families. Then a male theatre nurse who calls himself Rose began using the female facilities where they change before and after a shift. Rose has not transitioned. He wears men’s clothes and apart from long hair he presents wholly as male, nor, say his colleagues, does he take hormones because he and his girlfriend are trying to conceive. Parading around in boxer shorts, staring at nurses in their bras and asking one woman repeatedly “are you going to get undressed yet?”, Rose made nurses feel so uncomfortable some started changing in the disabled toilet.
But when they complained to management they learnt that the policy of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation 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.
A vicious, vengeful trans lobby, which dubs opponents bigots, has frightened many into silence. The Darlington nurses were always whispering in hospital kitchens with distressed colleagues too fearful to go public. But they are determined neither to resign from jobs they love, nor to back down. Their tribunal case, which has a preliminary hearing this month, could set a major precedent. They also have a strong ally in Streeting, Labour’s least tribal thinker, who is determined to unravel NHS policy at source. Introduced by stealth it has turned loyal, hard-working nurses into unlikely campaigners.
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.
