‘A mind is like a parachute,’ said Frank Zappa: ‘It doesn’t work if it is not open.’ For all the recent finger-prodding about free speech, the Trump court’s brusque if still not successful outright dismissal of diversity rights—along with every other cut by Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) even when full of highly problematic accounting errors—illustrate a serious tightening of attitudes as much as budgets.
As everyone knows, King Trump has for example just dismissed black ‘joint chiefs chair’ air force general CQ Brown Jr who Hegseth accused of ‘DEI woke shit’. Even the CIA has moved to fire more than a dozen officers for working on diversity. Not to mention threatened dismissals in the event of unanswered what-have-you-dones. For the UK, this begs a really important question: is there anything we should be learning from all this? We already know that supporting a diverse workforce actually increases company profits. We know further pluses include more creativity, more innovation, more happiness.
But will a US-style rollback on all this follow the latest Dominic Cummings aspiration of a Tory-Reform UK merger—assisted by Trump and Musk—winning the next UK general election? Right now, polling suggests, Reform could snatch between 70 and 170 seats, mostly from Labour.
To some, the real irony is that the present anti-diversity movement in the US is still a case of billionaire first and worker second, and not much about merit at all. Or has it ever been thus? We all know that old chestnut about CEOs being dictators but do so many bosses now have to see themselves as mini-versions of the oldest inaugurated president in US history? With all these different aspects of DEI attemptedly rolled back with extraordinary speed—as fast as the alarming backdoor Apple loophole felt all of a sudden here in the UK—you could be forgiven for thinking its intended purpose simply for underrepresented groups to feel even more underrepresented, as if a boot must somehow be imprinted on the face of anyone not towing the new party line
And why do so few of us dare to care about any of this? And why are some of those who do now suggesting it may actually be a good thing to feel vulnerable? I am struggling to believe this could happen here. Maybe former diplomat and politician Rory Stewart is right when he says we are a far more moderate country than X or Reform suggest.
One anonymous US medical whistleblower brought to my attention by a professor friend has just said that the mass removal of painfully relevant data by DOGE relating to certain vulnerable groups amounts pretty much to ‘digital genocide’. This whistleblower states that official publications sharing information on diseases right now—the ones that have been mothballed almost overnight—mean that key epidemiological surveillance systems are no longer functioning—‘allowing infectious diseases to flourish unmonitored and unchecked’. Most alarmingly, this person says that the sole reason American scientists aren’t speaking out is because they are terrified of the response—‘not just having our research cancelled and being summarily dismissed,’ the whistleblower wrote anonymously from the sanctuary of the BMJ (British Medical Journal) last week, ‘but also set upon by the 250 million followers of Elon Musk on X. Our homes, salaries, families, and even our lives are at risk.’
Even if there exists legitimate argument for what people like to call a meritocracy, even if less government should be greeted as a good thing when we know so much money can be squandered, it is still not just victims starting to believe these actions have a kind of puerile vengeance at heart, but also that increasing numbers not on the firing line must see just how vulnerable certain minorities are being made to feel. While this kind of thing may never be acceptable to the majority of UK voters (despite Vance’s Munich remarks, the UK does still have values), we still cannot afford to be complacent.
Which is why now is as good a time as any to look at the state of play regarding UK trade unions with all of this. As the new hard-man outlook in the US attempts to extirpate its diversity, equity and inclusion footprint, one of the realities in the UK is that unions here have always been dominated by white, male, and working-class members. This has for many years been at the expense of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) workers, women, and migrants, though I note that contemporary left-wing thinkers such as Ash Sarkar in her new book Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War are now expressing an almost fashionable wariness of identity politics, which for someone like Sarkar is an unexpected dose of anti-wokeness—as if diversity, equity and inclusion are essentially separatist and non-unifying as concepts—indeed, as if identity politics themselves have poisoned the left. (‘Silly you for actually taking the politics seriously and thinking the lives mattered,’ responded feminist writer Victoria Smith last week about Sarkar’s previous take.)
While unions have played—at times—an impressive role here in fighting workplace discrimination, racial and gender inequalities were so heavily reinforced in the early and mid-20th century, it was a difficult to break away from them. Back then, racial inequality stretched to unions even operating a ‘colour bar’, restricting Black and Asian workers from joining them, thereby actively limiting Black and Asian communities to lower-paid and therefore less secure jobs. Union control at the point of entry to apprenticeships was the other side of appalling. The gatekeepers, if you like, were corrupt as hell. The men on the door, for they were mostly men, prevented a lot of Black and Asian workers from advancing in industries such as engineering and construction. One of the worst things in the 1940s and 1950s was when unions aggressively supported employers who sought to limit any kind of hiring of non-white workers whatsoever because they feared it would put their jobs at risk.
Gender-wise, it has been the same. Many UK unions believed that lower wages for female workers preserved job opportunities and wage levels for men. This of course feels quite extraordinary today but from many accounts the print and engineering unions were particularly bad. In fact, it was the unions far more than the employers who kept the inequality going by keeping women in lower-paid jobs. Not to mention preventing them from union leadership and any kind of decision-making.
Chloe Koffman, political lead at the Communication Workers Union (CWU), has critiqued the Me Too movement in the past, arguing that it failed to address what she saw as the power structures underpinning gender inequality and did not provide good enough solutions for working women who were without financial security. It was only growing activism among an umbrella of Black workers, women’s movements in the end—in addition to external pressures like crucial anti-discrimination laws—which forced unions to try to be more inclusive. They were certainly not going to do it themselves, it seemed.
Despite genuine efforts to improve things, an underrepresentation in union leadership also still exists today. Although UK trade unions are making as much effort to improve things as the US would appear to dismantle things, leadership positions in the UK are still disproportionately occupied by white men. Women, BAME workers, and the disabled are still underrepresented in executive roles and decision-making bodies–this is not about wokeness but fair representation.
What is more, immigrant workers, particularly from non-EU backgrounds, regularly find themselves working in precarious, low-paid, and deeply insecure jobs, with far weaker union representation. Many BAME workers seem to be concentrated in sectors with lower union membership rates, such as hospitality, social care, and gig economy jobs. Not only that, but difficult language barriers along with a very real fear of employer retribution, and of course everyday legal status concerns, discourage union membership even further.
The uncomfortable fact is that women today make up a significant portion of union membership, particularly in the public sector—such as NHS, education—but still face pay gaps, workplace discrimination, and obstacles to authority or leadership.
Within all of this, some unions have simply been slower than others in addressing gender-specific issues such as sexual harassment, maternity rights, and flexible working. The GMB union, as a culture, has been lambasted in the past. In 2020, barrister Karon Monaghan KC famously led an internal inquiry in which the GMB was described as ‘institutionally sexist’. Issues of bullying, misogyny, cronyism, and sexual harassment were levelled against it. Despite subsequent agreements to reform, later reports suggest some staff and members still believed conditions had not improved, leading to complaints all the way to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)—specifically about ongoing institutional sexism and poor handling of harassment cases.
It should be added that a lot of today’s inequalities are sector-based. For example, trade unions have traditionally been strong in manufacturing and heavy industry, where the workforce is largely white and male. In addition, those sectors dominated by women and BAME workers, such as care work and hospitality, have far lower unionisation rates, and therefore possess weaker bargaining powers. Research also points to working mothers across the UK continuing—even today—to face crazy challenges about flexible working and maternity rights.
In fact, a new survey by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has revealed that over two in five working mothers today would not feel comfortable asking about flexible working in job interviews—basically fearing discrimination. Additionally, one in five mothers reported experiencing harassment or negative comments related to their pregnancy or flexible working habits. This is monstrous in a so-called modern age.
Unions may exist to secure better wages and conditions but research suggests persistent, sometimes unchallenged, pay gaps within unionised workplaces affect BAME and female workers in particular.
So where are we today as compared to the US? Well, there is still much to do. BAME activists and workers still accuse UK trade unions of racism by highlighting their lack of engagement with issues such as police discrimination, Islamophobia, and workplace racism. Internal resistance to change within unions, particularly among older and more long-standing members, has slowed some of the progress in addressing diversity. One or two stuck-in-the-muds, one can only assume, linger in the corridor.
That said, it seems the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and one or two other individual unions are launching more initiatives to promote diversity, such as training programmes, mentorship schemes, and dedicated equality structures. I am told unions like UNISON, Unite, and the GMB have created new BAME, women’s, LGBTQ+, and disability networks precisely to ensure such concerns are better represented. Increasing efforts to unionise workers in more vulnerable sectors—including the gig economy, social care—have also led to greater outreach to BAME and migrant workers.
In the end, while UK trade unions attempt to make progress, real challenges remain. Whatever happens with the madcap slashing of diversity initiatives in the US, along with continued news such as US federal judge Adam Abelson blocking Trump’s executive order seeking to end government support for programs promoting DEI, the UK still aspires to be a fair place in the workplace. The next question is, will there be any work?
