Monday, April 21, 2025

‘We struck for trans+ rights, you can do it too’: report from Australian socialist

Sophie Cotton, a socialist, trade unionist and trans activist from Australia, writes on how unions struck and campaigned for trans+ rights


On strike for trans+ rights


Sunday 20 April 2025
 SOCIALIST WORKER

The transphobic result in the UK Supreme Court is a worry for socialists everywhere.

The resistance already being organised on the streets in Britain is a good sign. I extend solidarity from socialists and transgender activists in Australia as you start to fight back against this decision.

The most important thing we need is for resistance to spread into every workplace, university and school. In the National Tertiary Education Union in Australia, we built the kind of class politics that show what this can look like.

We campaigned and struck to win gender affirmation leave for trans+ people. It’s a form of paid time off work while you undergo transition—no matter what that looks like, socially, medically or legally.

It seeks to address the realities of trans people’s lives under capitalism. Trans+ people are disproportionately unemployed, dependent on government benefits, and reliant on sex work.

It can be incredibly difficult trying to find work or re-enter the formal economy when you face discrimination in hiring and firing. And you find yourself cut off from work or family support.

By fighting for gender affirmation leave, we argued that trans+ people deserve the right to stay in employment while they undergo transition.

But fighting for this leave is also a political response to the rising bigotry from politicians and the press. It helped to win more inclusive workplaces and win difficult ideological battles at work.

Our efforts helped establish 30 days a year as the benchmark for unions to claim. And they encouraged the first nationally coordinated union round of negotiations for gender affirmation leave.

The origin for our wins on gender affirmation leave was a bitter internal debate within my union in 2022 about freedom of speech and transphobia.

Union members were split when the union leadership moved a transphobic amendment which avoided condemning hate speech and transphobic feminism. Some good trade unionists supported the officials.

Others called on transgender people and their supporters to quit the union in protest. Many more were caught in the middle.

But we took this setback as an opportunity. As socialists, we argued for the need to stand against hate speech as a union.

We also argued that transgender people and our supporters were needed in the union—and not just to fight for a better union policy. But more importantly to fight against the transphobia we experience in the workplace.

We linked this debate over “gender critical feminism” back to our real lives at the workplace.

Where I work, we petitioned to increase our log of claims to 30 days a year for gender affirmation and launched a video campaign.

And, ultimately, we went on strike demanding leave for transgender and First Nations workers. We set up picket lines across every entrance, painting a giant transgender flag banner.

We organised with community groups to march onto campus and call out the transphobic practices of the university management.

This kind of action was repeated all over the country by many people. I met one group of workers who weren’t transgender, but had organised themselves in solidarity to petition and demand gender affirmation leave at Wollongong University.

And we won. Gender affirmation leave is now an entitlement at almost every university in Australia.

Many of the same trade unionists who had a year before voted for a transphobic amendment were completely supportive of this campaign.

But, in doing so, they were suddenly faced with bigoted behaviour, such as at Australian National University.

Transphobic feminists interrupted an important union meeting to demand that gender affirmation leave be struck out. And they demanded that menstrual leave be limited only to people who identify as women—excluding non-binary people and trans men.

Trade unionists saw transphobic ideas for what they were. The fight for material change and for ideological change happened at the same time.

After more than a year of this fight, we came away with not only a tangible win for trans+ people at work. We won another vote that saw the union condemn the ideology of transphobic feminism.

A united flight provides the most fertile ground where even seemingly set ideas can change. It doesn’t matter on the picket line whether you are black, trans, cisgender, gay, or straight— we are fighting the same boss.

Unions in Australia supported the fight for marriage equality and mobilised against the bigoted tour of transphobe “Posie Parker”.

We are still fighting against puberty blocker bans and for discrimination protections for all LGBT+ workers and gender affirmation leave for every worker in Australia.

But some of our successes so far point to the way forward. The organised working class is our best ally as transgender people. And for socialists everywhere, we have an urgent job in injecting class politics into the movement for transgender rights—and trans politics into our workplace.

It can seem impossible to shake off the oppressive ideas that union colleagues, family or friends have.

But struggle from below can tip the scales and change reality. We need rank and file, socialist politics everywhere in response to all the growing rot of the system—genocide, climate crisis and the growth of reactionary politics.

Sophie Cotton is a member of Solidarity which is part of the International Socialist Tendency alongside the Socialist Workers Party

Trade Unionists For Trans Rights: Online meeting for trade unionists in Britain to organise around trans+ rights, Monday 28 April. Sign up online

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