LGBT Rights in the Workplace - Peter Purton

The UK Experience

It is now more than thirty years since the first openly lesbian and gay trade unionists began to win support from their trade unions against discrimination in British workplaces. It is more than twenty years since the British trade union movement - in a debate at the 1985 Trades Union Congress - agreed as national policy to combat such discrimination. And it is ten years since that policy was given more concrete form, when official representative structures were established within the body of the TUC. During all that time, but especially in the last ten years, there have been fundamental changes in the legal, political and social position of LGBT people in the UK - changes that have been interconnected.
The legal position for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people has undergone a revolution. Until 1967, male homosexual acts were simply illegal, and lesbianism was totally invisible. The process of decriminalisation of gay male sex, begun only partially in that year, was only completed after the election of the Labour Party to government in 1997. By 2008, following many further changes to both criminal and civil law, legal equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people exists in almost every respect. Trans people won protection against discrimination in employment following a successful European Court challenge, and gained legal recognition for their acquired gender in 2004. Still without protection against discrimination in the provision of goods and services, trans people have been promised an end to this omission
through forthcoming legislation designed to bring together into a single statute all the various primary and secondary anti-discrimination and equality laws and regulations.