Good relations between groups of staff
Jane McClenachan in the Morning Star on the Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife tribunal:
This is a case that should never have happened and responsibility lies with the Scottish government, the NHS and the trade unions.
Their collective disregard for women’s rights has been made public. Inaccurate guidance issued by all of these organisations advises that individuals can choose which single-sex facilities they wish to use according to their gender identity. This mistaken position is set out in model trans equality policies produced by trade unions.
In point of fact, the Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Regulation 1992 requires employers to provide separate changing rooms and toilets for male and female staff.
NHS Fife has failed to do so. Its workplace policy is not compliant, and it did not conduct an Equality Impact Assessment. The tribunal also heard that Upton began transitioning only 18 months ago, meaning he is ineligible for a gender recognition certificate. Legally he is male and as such must be treated like any other male employee.
Furthermore, under the Public Sector Equality Duty, NHS Fife has a duty to foster good relations between groups of staff with different protected characteristics. Neither Upton nor Peggie should ever have been put in this position. It is the employer’s failing and NHS Fife has failed both.
And why? Because trans ideology dictates that trans always gets to ignore other rights, especially women’s rights.
The NHS trade unions surely have questions to answer. They sign off employment policies at national and at local NHS board level. They are experts in employment and equalities law, employ legal officers and have access to specialist legal advice. Their role is to scrutinise employment policies and hold employers to account for their responsibilities. So, what happened here? Are their full-time and lay officers misinformed about the law? Or is this indicative of institutional capture?
The main health unions, Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Unison and Unite, claim to support the Equality Act including the protected characteristic of sex, while also having policies supporting self-ID of sex and the belief that “transwomen are women.” They deny that there is any conflict with women’s rights. Indeed, against the backdrop of the Peggie case, Unison’s women’s conference endorsed a motion stating exactly that.
Which is completely absurd. It’s like saying there’s no conflict between workers’ rights and bosses’ rights – which, come to think of it, is apt enough when you recall that Upton is of the boss class and Peggie is of the worker one. Whither intersectionality now eh?
Peggie’s trade union, the RCN refused to represent her. The Peggie case has placed trade unions in a highly unflattering spotlight before their majority female memberships. And this is not going away. A similar tribunal case involving a group of nurses in Darlington begins soon. It would be surprising if unions were not doing a pretty quick reassessment of their positions, as Labour has done — although more likely it might be a long wait. Both the Scottish TUC and Unite issued public statements condemning the Scottish Labour leadership for its about turn on the GRR (Scotland) Act.
The UK government blocked that Act, preventing self-ID becoming law in Scotland. The Peggie case illustrates what enforcement of the GRR Act would mean for women. For the political parties that voted the Act through at Holyrood in December 2023 and the trade unions that support it, the chickens are coming home to roost.
I look forward to the squawking.
It’s hard to even steel man their positions, because they’re just so immediately and obviously contradictory bollocks.
Yeah, but some groups are more equal than others.
I disagree. NHS Fife did not “put” Upton “in this position.” He put himself in that position all by himself. Upton chose to enter a female single sex space knowing he was male. NHS Fife permitted him to do so. That was not an accident. That was not a mistake. It was deliberate, on the part of both Upton and NHS. They are co-conspirators, or at least offender and enabler/apologist.
Sporting bodies which allow men to cheat against women are doing no disservice to the men who are cheating. Siding with cheating men, and persecuting women who complain, is a violation of their duty of care to the women under their rules and regulations. Similarly, NHS Fife, by allowing Upton to enter women’s spaces, was not “failing” him, they were aiding and abetting him, because they took measures against Peggie. They were allowing his violation of boundaries, and he knew he was violating those boundaries, just as men in women’s sports know they’re cheating.
Just because the authorities let them cheat doesn’t let men off the hook for willingly taking advantage of the opportunity to cheat they’ve been handed. Their poor sportsmanship and taking of women’s places is still on them personally, however “inclusive” the sports federation might be. Would they feel that they’d been “failed” if they were allowed to compete against children, stealing all their awards and risking injury? Would they be absolved from their own opportunism in this case? No. Well the same goes for Upton. He knew what he was doing when he did it; he took advantage, in a predatory way, of a loophole opened to him by authorities who should have known better, who were failing to meet and uphold their legal and moral obligations to the women they betrayed, then punished.
How about another analogy. It is no defence of your actions if a misguided or corrupt police officer or police department tells you it’s okay to break into somebody’s house. It’s still wrong, supposed “official” “permission” or “inclusion” notwithstanding. He wasn’t yet eligible for even the flimsy, fictional, figleaf of a GRC, so however mistakenly supportive the current laws are, he did not even clear their offensively ridiculous low bar of acceptance.
I personally would shy away from any reliance on the “he didn’t even have/wasn’t eligible for a GRC,” argument. It cedes too much legitimacy to any such thing. Doesn’t matter one bit if he totally qualified for and obtained whatever magical card or award certificate was on offer. That’s totally in the realm of fantasy, and has absolutely zero to do with sex, which is the relevant category.
maddog1129
Exactly. I also hate it when people bring up the fact that a TIM hasn’t gone through any surgeries as if it would have made a difference if he had. The same goes for any appeal to “effort” put in, “sacrifices” made etc. As Helen Joyce put it (from memory) womanhood is not reward, a recognition to be earned, a price to be won etc.
Oh I agree completely; I was just pointing out that he wasn’t even following the feeble fantasy “rules” that are in place.
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