TUC Equality Audit 2020-2021

It follows similar audits covering equality bargaining published in 2003, 2005, 2009, 2012 and 2016.

The process of producing this report was significantly disrupted by the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020, which is why it is being published later than previous Equality Audits.

Nevertheless, the period covered is the same as it would have been had it been published in the usual way. The unions had largely submitted their responses before the Covid outbreak, and all the information in the main part of the report relates to the pre-pandemic period.

The audit was carried out by the Labour Research Department (LRD) through an online questionnaire sent to all TUC affiliates in early January 2020, with a response due by late February 2020.

The national survey response

The response rate to the survey was very slightly lower than in 2016, with 36 of the TUC’s 48 affiliated unions replying – or 75 per cent. This compares with 79 per cent four years earlier

However, as most of the 12 unions that did not respond were smaller affiliates – nine of them have fewer than 10,000 members – the proportion of total TUC membership represented in the survey was very high, at 97.9 per cent. This is virtually the same proportion as in 2016 (97.6 per cent).

The affiliates that responded are listed in Appendix A. In addition to completing the questionnaire, unions were asked to supply examples of:

• particularly important guidance they had produced for negotiators in the last four years on the bargaining topics covered by the audit
• particularly important agreements or policies on these topics they had achieved with employers in the last four years.