Co-op scraps policy allowing trans staff to use toilets they 'feel safest'
www.thepinknews.com
The Co-operative Group has removed a policy that explicitly allowed trans and non-binary staff to use gendered toilets they felt “safest”.

The Co-operative Group has removed a policy that explicitly allowed trans and non-binary staff to use gendered toilets where they felt “safest”, following new UK guidance on single-sex spaces.

  • heliotrope@slrpnk.netEnglish
    47·
    2 days ago

    Reading the article, it seems that the Co-op are trying their best, in light of the government’s shitfuckery.

    The updated policy instead says that, wherever possible, the retailer will provide individual, lockable gender-neutral facilities, with decisions about access to gendered spaces made “sensitively and on a case-by-case basis,” as reported by The Sunday Times.

    The change follows the UK Supreme Court’s April 2025 ruling on the legal meaning of “woman” and “man”, as well as new guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) stating that single-sex spaces should be provided based on biological sex.

    A spokesperson for the Co-op, which has been a vocal supporter of trans rights, said it updated the policy following legal advice and consultation with its staff networks “to ensure compliance with our legal obligations and to support our trans, non-binary and intersex colleagues”, in a statement to The Sunday Times.

      • Zedstrian@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        111·
        2 days ago

        While the Co-op may not be transphobic itself, single occupant gender-neutral bathrooms are a solution presented by transphobes who want to continue misgendering trans men and women under the veneer of a discriminatory ‘compromise’.

        Trans people across the UK are having their rights marginalized.

        • Slashme@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          20 hours ago

          How are gender-neutral bathrooms discriminatory? They seem to me to be the perfect solution.

          • Zedstrian@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2·
            17 hours ago

            Because requiring that trans people use them instead of the bathroom of the gender they identify as is still exclusionary and transphobic; it tells them that they do not belong to the gender they identify as and/or that they are a danger to cisgender individuals of that gender.

      • TRAHR@quokk.auOPEnglish
        103·
        2 days ago

        It’s segregation unless you meet some nebulous criteria.

    • TRAHR@quokk.auOPEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      The retailer’s former CEO Shirine Khoury-Haq had told The Telegraph last May that she would “protect trans people to the end” following the Supreme Court ruling. The Co-op has since been hit by significant leadership changes, with Khoury-Haq leaving earlier this year after claims of a “toxic” culture in the workplace. Chair Debbie White also announced her resignation last Monday (10 August).

      How much of this is leadership based.