- Conference
- 2024 National Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 8 December 2023
- Decision
- Carried
Conference celebrates that 2024 is UNISON’s year of the LGBT+ workers. This is an opportunity to not only showcase the amazing work the LGBT+ self-organised group has done over our history, but it will also be a chance to highlight the continued discrimination faced by LGBT+ members in Health and what we can do to make our workplaces more inclusive. Our union has a long, proud history of LGBT+ activism. 2024 marks 50 years since the establishment of NALGAY, the first gay and lesbian group in the UK trade union movement.
Even though we have come so far in those 50 years, LGBT+ people in the UK experience significant physical and mental health inequalities compared to the general population. Data from a recent NHS Staff Survey shows that the LGBT+ workforce remains at a heightened risk of physical violence, bullying harassment or abuse from colleagues or patients. This highlights the need for more to be done to make our workplaces more LGBT+ inclusive and our policies to be reviewed and updated regularly.
Conference notes that in 2022, the NHS Confederation published the LGBTQ+ Inclusion Framework. This framework aligns with UNISON’s policy on LGBT+ equality. It comprises of six key pillars of inclusivity that organisations should aim for to create and maintain inclusive cultures within NHS organisations. It includes the following:
• We have visible leadership and confident staff
• We have a strong knowledge base
• We are non-heteronormative and non-cisnormative in everything we do
• We take responsibility for collecting and reporting data
• We listen to our service users
• We proactively seek out partners to co-deliver services
Conference believes that the Year of LGBT+ Workers can be used as a tool to negotiate with employers to improve inclusion in workplaces for LGBT+ members working in Health. For example, adopting the UNISON trans equality policy and using the LGBT+ policy checklist to make our workplace policies as inclusive as possible. We also need to encourage active recruitment and promotion of LGBT+ Health members and strive for LGBT+ representation at branch, regional and service group level. By fostering diversity in leadership, we not only provide role models for LGBT+ members but also bring diverse perspectives to decision-making, benefiting the entire service group.
Conference calls on the Health Service Group Executive to:
1. Promote UNISON’s year of LGBT+ workers to health service group members
2. Work with the National LGBT+ committee and regional LGBT+ self-organised groups to make LGBT+ equality a core part of our negotiations with health employers.
3. Encourage health branches to advocate and campaign for a revision of health employers’ equality policies to ensure they follow our model guidance for LGBT+ workers and promote the NHS Confederation LGBTQ+ Inclusion Framework.
4. Encourage and support the development of activism amongst our health LGBT+ members.
5. Promote and encourage participation in equality training, and in particular the trans ally training.