Unison elections - female only seats are not so

[FrodoTheBlueWhippet]

Disappointed to receive ballot papers from Unison today for their upcoming elections.

Why is it acceptable to have men standing in the Disabled Members' Seats Female Seat??

The point is that there's nothing to stop employers or similar entities from discriminating against their female staff unless someone who is discriminated against takes a case to a tribunal/court. That is in, the absence of grown-ups wanting the companies, unions, etc to operate lawfully.

I think there's going to be a lot of trans activists in companies, unions, etc who will act to discriminate against women and will count on getting away with it. The goal will be to erode the force of the Supreme Court judgment away by means of discriminatory practices that are widespread and remain commonplace.

They are.ive started a thread about it as unison have made me furious

Also, there is a ‘Disabled Members General’ which is open to both sexes. The biological male could have gone for that instead of contesting a seat which is designated for a biological female.

I imagine it is immaterial whether Unison have their own special rules which they made to let a male to take a supposedly female seat. Those are similar to ‘golf club’ rules, and they cannot break the law.

It is a big FU from Unison to women, isn’t it? At women’s expense, and to women’s detriment.

It’s not allowed since the SC judgement. If you’re on X share with TU SEEN

I'll be emailing and cancelling my memebership

I'm not on X

Definitely email. Don’t cancel yet - if this gets into the media then I am prepared to bet a sizeable donation to Sex Matters that the candidacy will be withdrawn within a week.

@FrodoTheBlueWhippet this from another thread So you could send it here.

…and you want to whistleblow, post here on mumsnet or you can contact James Esses.
[email protected]
His post on X says this
I’m hearing increasing reports of organisations, private and public, seeking to undermine the Supreme Court judgment.
If your place of work is continuing to deny biological reality and you want to anonymously blow the whistle, please get in touch.
x.com/jamesesses/status/1915306058018427023?s=46

I don't think it would count as discrimination against women but maybe it could be classed as indirect as it makes it harder for a woman to win the seat.

why do you think that? It’s not just the women candidates who are potentially discriminated against by having votes diverted from them, it’s the disabled women who won’t have the representation that this post is supposed to provide if this person is elected.

Women don't have a right to be represented by a woman. The reason I don't think it's discrimination against women is because any woman can go for election. I would assume it's eligibility to be elected that's the grounds for discrimination rather than having representation.

I could be completely wrong though.

@FrodoTheBlueWhippet Today I received an email from our branch (which irritates me as I left but they still continue to email me) informing me of the local trans rights protests.

For godsake they really don’t give a fuck about women and girls.

Idk, I would assume the posts reserved for people with protected characteristics are meant to exist for the benefit of the members rather that for the committee members.

Won't the EHRC deal with this?

Could be. As I said, I could be wrong.

It is definitely direct discrimination against men though.

https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2025/04/NEC-2025-notice-of-election-Contested-seats.pdf

https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2024/12/Election-procedures.pdf

So, just posting links to the seat categories, and rules again.

To reiterate the poster above, under eligibility rules, No 12, it states that

“Only members from specified categories, such as female seats and low pay reserved seats, can be nominated for those seats.”

Following the SC ruling, we know those from the specified female category must be a biological female. So, there should be no biological males contesting the seats in those categories specified for females.

Surely they’re breaking the law? Report to the police, to the women & equalities minister and to her shadow. This is exactly what the SC judgement is supposed to stop

The candidate in question seems really shit, regardless of sex or gender identity. There’s not one mention of what he would do for female disabled members in that drivel he’s written. In fact it gets cut off mid sentence as he’s failed to adhere to the word limit.

I’ll be voting for the other candidates who have better explained what they hope to do for disabled members, then cancel my direct debit.

Bumping this as it is so important.

I had no idea who to vote for, so as I read the booklets I crossed out each name as I found something off-putting - I think for this guy I got as far has his "she/her" pronouns?

Ultimately I used all my votes on people who did not offend me with their election addresses, or recent twitter posts.

My pack only came today I will be reading the addresses with interest

I see that a number of posters agree that this situation is discriminating against women. I have to ask, is it not also breaking the EA directly, bh allowing a man to stand in a place advertised as being for a woman?

I agree this person should not be standing for a female-only seat. I would assume, though, that the election papers were already at the printer's or being packed up ready to post out when the Supreme Court ruling came through. What one would hope is that someone with common sense at Unison is listening to a competent lawyer who is pointing out that the law on this area is now absolutely clear-cut, unlike the position two weeks ago - if your rules say female candidates only, that means biologically female, not a candidate who is biologically male but identifes as female, with or without a Gender Recognition Certificate.

It's up to Unison members to decide whether they want to get rid of female-only committee posts or not. I am not a union member but I'd have thought the optics of saying 'If we can't have a trans-identified male in a female-only post we won't have a female-only post at all!' would be rather poor. Isn't it the case that the majority of Unison members are female?

I would have thought so.

I think it also indirectly discriminates against men as it only allows 1 type of man to stand (a trans woman) but not all men.

Every now and then my husband suggests I am "obsessed" with this issue. Then something happens like I get a ballot paper through with a bloke standing for a woman's seat when there was another option available and it's so bloody obvious they are trolling us.

Has anyone on X seen anything about this please? Is he still standing?