By Georgia Wilkinson
“An injury to one is an injury to all” has ceased to be the rallying cry for the dominant leadership of the Public and Commercial Services Union. At its Annual Delegate Conference in Brighton, delegates were told by the union’s misnamed ‘Left Unity’ leadership that trans delegates would be barred from using the bathrooms aligning with their gender, and would be made to use those aligning with their ‘biological sex’.
This was, thankfully, beaten back by delegates who refused to begin the conference on the basis of denying the basic rights of trans union members. But this didn’t stop National President Martin Cavanagh from trampling on democratic rights.
Citing legal risk to the organisation, based on advice withheld from delegates and the union’s elected NEC, Cavanagh marked 25 motions as being out of order, the majority of which were about trans rights. This was an eight fold increase on blocked motions from 2024.
Among the motions undemocratically ruled out was an emergency motion proposed by three branches calling on the union to “publicly commit to all trans people being able to use the facilities of their choice at all PCS events/buildings, including ensuring that trans women are welcome in all women’s spaces in our union.”
This bureaucratic manoeuvre by the leadership is symptomatic of a year of presidential rulings silencing dissent. But they are also an indirect response to pushback from PCS activists who have been challenging the Left Unity faction’s failed strategy in challenging attacks on working-class and oppressed people.
The trade union movement has a proud heritage of supporting the oppressed, rising in solidarity with the victims of a capitalist system and recognising an attack on the rights of one section of the working class is fundamentally an attack on all.
Socialist Alternative stands in solidarity with activists fighting for union democracy, trans liberation and a militant industrial strategy to defend our unions. This right-wing deference to the status quo is a dangerous undermining of the trade union movement. The unions must instead act as a force for defence and mass struggle against right-wing attacks.
