How did trade unions go from defending their members’ right to free speech to encouraging their employers to discipline them for breaching workplace speech codes?

Historically, trade unions championed the principle that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’, standing in solidarity with workers against bosses. But at the Free Speech Union we’ve seen any number of cases that prove just how historical this is.

Nowadays, workers under disciplinary investigation for dissenting from progressive orthodoxies to be supported by their unions, particularly on sex and gender issues. In fact, it’s often worse than that, with the unions themselves encouraging employers to discipline their members for breaching workplace speech codes.

How did we get here? How did unions – once such staunch defenders of their members against employers – become management’s allies in enforcing ideological conformity?

We explore that question in this report, concluding that the answer lies in the increasing dominance over union culture of university-educated professionals who share the taste of HR departments for identity politics, EDI dogma and language policing.

This report lays bare the hugely damaging consequences for workers unwilling to play the HR game. (Warning: be prepared for some hair-raising examples.) It also calls for reform of the Employment Relations Act to allow employees facing disciplinary hearings to seek support from external advocacy groups such as the FSU and not be forced to rely on trade union representatives who, all too often, are on the side of the bosses.