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This has been one of the Scottish LGBT Committee's most successful years. Our first meeting of the year saw a record turnout and we have grown steadily and are seeing new faces along at almost every meeting. We now have a much fairer spilt with meetings being typically around 50/50 between men and women. We also have representation from all of the service groups. However, we would like to see more bi and trans members involved and this will again be a priority for the coming year. To improve communication between members, we set up an online discussion group. This allows members and committee members to discuss topics even if they are unable to get along to meetings. Further improvements will be made to this in the coming year. We are also working on updating our website and both these vital resources will be re-launched and a communication will go to all our members to encourage more involvement. March saw another successful training event with our Irish colleagues and topics covered included Transgender Awareness training, LGBT Youth Charter and the new Gender Equality duty legislation. Our policy weekend in April, allowed us to consider the DTI consultation paper to outlaw sexual orientation discrimination in the provision of goods and services. We used the national UNISON response as a guide but looked at it from a Scottish perspective. Our experiences with the previous legislation's strengths and weaknesses allowed us to highlight our perception of weaknesses within the proposal. Our response was sent for consideration.
We held six workshops to plan ahead for the next year. The subjects were UK & European Development, Partnership, Finance, Affiliations, Inclusion and Recruitment. The last two are probably the most important as they are the reason for being a Self Organised Group and having a strong enough membership to have a voice. It is essential that Bisexual and Transgender members are involved with the SOG otherwise the past three years have been a waste of time. The Committee recognise the importance of raising awareness locally and nationally and encouraging members to be involved. Glasgow hosted this year's Pride Scotia on Saturday June 24th. The Scottish LGBT Committee took part in the march and staffed a stall. Around 400 people dropped by so we were able to give out information to existing members and to sign up new members. In October, four people from the Committee represented UNISON Scotland at ILGA Europe, held this year in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Scottish LGBT Committee has always had a good working relationship with the LGBT Centre, who are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year. This coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Glasgow City branch LGBT group. It has been agreed that we will host a joint event with them to celebrate the successes of the past ten years. One of our committee members recently had an article about our work published in the centre's magazine. A member of the Committee has now become a Director of Glasgay - the international arts festival celebrating queer culture. UNISON Scotland are sponsoring monologues by Alan Bennett, which runs for six nights at the Tron Theatre. Members of the LGBT Committee have agreed to staff a stall in the theatre on each night of the production. Our informal women's social events take place every few months in Edinburgh or Glasgow and we have seen more women come along in recent months due to increased publicity. These will continue next year and venues and locations will change according to demand. Following requests from several branches, training on the equality regulations has been arranged. The Equalities Officer is also delivering training sessions to all branches in Scotland on the new Gender Equality legislation. Elaine Duffy Scottish LGBT Committee - Report to National LGBT - September 2006The meeting was held on Saturday 2nd September 2006 at the Fife Men's Project, Kirkcaldy. There were 7 men and 5 women in attendance. Pride Scotia Committee members attended the march in Glasgow and staffed the UNISON stall, along with two full-time UNISON staff. Many new members were signed up and approx 400 people visited the stall, from existing members with questions or who wanted to find out more, to new members who joined on the day. Of the existing members we spoke to, many of them had never heard of the LGBT SOG so it is obvious that information is still not filtering through from branch executives. We have agreed to do a ‘target mailing' to the new members who joined on the date, giving them more information about the group and urging them to attend conference. Worryingly, some members told us that when they approached their branch for assistance in dealing with homophobic harassment at work, they were told, "the union doesn't deal with that kind of thing". We would urge all reps to continue to push their branches, regional committees etc to get information out about LGBT SOGs and the work we do. Issues that were raised by members on the day have all been referred to the appropriate branches for action. Nine firefighters were disciplined because of their refusal to hand out literature to members of the public at this year's Pride. This invoked heated debate in the national press, but we congratulate Strathclyde Fire Service on their decision and the resolute stance they took on this. They said that the officers' refusal was a "fundamental breach of their core responsibilities". The chief fire officer also said "Fire does not discriminate, and neither do we." One of the firefighters, a watch manager, was reduced to the rank of crew manager, losing an estimated £5,000 in salary. The other eight received written warnings and all nine were ordered to follow "intensive" diversity training. Glasgay A member of the Committee has now become a Director of Glasgay - the international arts festival celebrating queer culture. UNISON Scotland are sponsoring monologues by Alan Bennett, which is a production that runs for six nights at the Tron Theatre. Members of the LGBT Committee have agreed to staff a stall in the theatre on each night of the production. UNISON's name will appear on the programmes and all promotional materials. A series of six posters is being displayed in all Underground stations and on buses. Strathclyde Passenger Transport originally refused to display the posters on the ground that they were ‘political', however this was successfully challenged. The theme of the posters is ‘Hey Hetero!' which challenges homophobic behaviours and attitudes. Celtic Connections Another training event with our Irish colleagues is being planned for February 2007. ILGA Europe Four people from the Committee will represent Scotland at ILGA Europe, being held this year in Sofia, Bulgaria. Glasgow LGBT Centre The Scottish LGBT Committee has always had a good working relationship with the LGBT Centre, who are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year. It has been agreed that we will host a joint event with them to celebrate the successes of the past ten years. One of the committee members recently had an article about our work published in the centre's magazine. Google group / Website A decision was taken to disband our Google discussion group on ethical grounds. We are currently liaising with our colleagues at the NUJ to find an ethical replacement for this. We are also updating our website and both will re re-launched in the near future. Misc Fife branch recently secured a £12,000 compensation payment for a member who suffered homophobic harassment at work. Members on the Committee have dealt recently with several cases of false allegations. They agreed that the UNISON briefing on this was most helpful. Committee members have worked with branches to highlight this and to raise awareness. An informal meeting for women has been arranged for Saturday 9th September 2006. We are hoping that many of the new members we signed up at Pride will come along on the day. Following requests from several branches, training on the equality regulations has been arranged. The Equalities Officer is also delivering training sessions to all branches in Scotland on the new Gender Equality legislation. Scottish LGBT Committee - Report to National LGBT CommitteeCeltic Connections Training Event - March 2006The above training event is organised jointly with the Scottish and Northern Ireland Regional LGBT Committees. This year's event took place in Glasgow on 4th and 5th March. On Saturday, we had an excellent presentation from two directors from the Glasgow LGBT centre on the work of the centre and on Transgender Awareness Training. We looked at this from a Trade Union perspective with recruiting and organising objectives. The training was excellent and helped us identify some motions for conferences. Both Regional Committees agreed to put Committee members through the full two-day training course from Beyond Barriers and we will suggest that this is run as a workshop at National LGBT Conference with Scottish and Irish Committee members facilitating. In the afternoon, there was a very informative presentation by LGBT Youth Scotland that concentrated on the soon to be launched LGBT Youth Charter for organisations and companies. Again, this identified many opportunities for UNISON and we have now drawn up a detailed action plan. On Sunday, Eileen Dinning, Scottish Equalities Officer gave a presentation on the new Gender Equality Duty legislation that comes in in April 2007. There was much discussion around how we as reps need to be involved in this and how we can improve and feed into workplace negotiations, policies and agreements. The group also discussed multiple identity discrimination and agreed that much more work needs to be done to tackle this. We identified this as a topic for the next event, which will take place in Dublin in April 2007. All agreed this was a very worthwhile and enjoyable weekend, which has further strengthened links with our Irish colleagues that allow us to continue to pave the way for the national union. Scottish LGBT Policy weekend - June 2006 The main aim of the weekend was to plan the year ahead for the Committee. The Committee is rightly proud of what it has achieved in the past but realises that there is so much more to be done to continue striving for equality. There were three main areas of discussion:
The last two are probably the most important as they are the reason for being a Self Organised Group and having a strong enough membership to have a voice. It is essential that Bisexual and Transgender members are involved with the SOG otherwise the past three years have been a waste of time. The Committee recognised the importance of raising awareness locally and nationally and encouraging members to be involved. All in all an excellent weekend, plenty hard work which has achieved real results and gives plenty opportunity for the year ahead.
Pride Scotia Glasgow hosted this year's march on Saturday June 24th. The Scottish LGBT Committee had a stall and spoke to many people - some existing members who we signed up for the newsletter etc and tried to encourage to come along to our meetings - and we managed to recruit many new members. Next meeting Next meeting is due to be held in Fife on 02/09/06 Elaine Duffy LGBT report January 2006I have attended a training session and first meeting of the national LGBT committee in London on 13/14 January 2006. The first session, which was for new members of the committee, allowed us to become familiar with the work the committee do. In the afternoon, we were joined by existing members of the committee and we took part in a few exercises aimed at working out what we wanted to achieve as a committee and how we would go about doing it. This is the first LGBT committee, so there was a lot of discussion around how best to integrate bisexual and transgender members into our group and how we can move forward. Elections also took place for the sub-committees and I was elected on to the Campaigns and Policy Development sub-committee. The first meeting takes place on Tuesday 7th February 2006 in London. I have up to date copies of the record of conference decisions and the conference actions report if anyone wants them. Scottish LGBT Committee meeting - Saturday 21 January 2006 The meeting was the most well-attended one in our history with members from all Service Groups, a mix of branches and locations and an almost 50/50 split of women and men. It was also probably one of the longest meetings we had with a full agenda and lots of discussions going on. Celtic Connections This is a training event we are planning to hold with colleagues from Northern Ireland. It is being held on 24th - 26th February 2006. We have enough in the budget to cover six delegates from each location, but we agreed that we could possibly make this more if we make it non-residential for Scottish delegates. Topics to be discussed include multiple discrimination and multiple identity issues. Some possible external guests were discussed including youth LGBT organisations, and bi or trans organisations. Policy weekend This has now been changed to 8th/9th April 2006 and will only consist of one overnight stay to maximise attendance and keep costs to a minimum. Topics for discussion include:
Co-convenors and Secretary will meet to prepare draft agenda. Attendance at meetings Everyone was pleased with the large turnout, however, we are conscious that not all meetings are so well-attended and people do have difficulties and other commitments that prevent them attending. It was agreed to set up an online message board so that people who were unable to attend could still contribute to discussions. This can also be used between meetings to continue discussions, agree agendas, training etc. Update - the board has now been set up and for security, access is by invitation. If anyone is interested in joining/contributing, please speak to me for access information. ILGA Europe The Scottish Committee has approved funding for future attendance. The next Conference is 25th - 29th October 2006 in Sofia, Belgium. Diary of Meetings 8th/9th April 2006 - Policy weekend 2nd September 2006-01-30 21st October 2006 - AGM 11th November 2006 - open to all delegates to national LGBT conference LGBT Conference The Committee have been asked to provide feedback on Conference 2005. This was discussed and the Secretary will respond with our comments. If anyone who attended Conference has any feedback to give, please contact myself or the Secretary as soon as possible. Any reports that members have submitted to their branches should be sent to the Secretary for forwarding to all committee members. It was noted that accommodation might be tight for this year's conference as the Police conference is on at the same time in the same venue. It was suggested that branches agree delegation numbers and book early to avoid disappointment. Donations and Affiliations None were agreed. All requests were noted. AOB Alan Cowan was nominated to attend STUC. Elaine Duffy
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