TUC Equality Audit 2022

There have been no union mergers since the last equivalent TUC Equality Audit (2018) that substantially affect this analysis, although Usdaw and Prospect have absorbed NACO and SUWBBS respectively, neither of which participated in 2018. However, this audit includes two respondent unions – NHBCSA and NSEAD – which were not affiliated to the TUC in 2017–18.

Data analysis

The percentages of unions quoted in this report are generally of the total number of unions responding to the audit. In some cases, analysis has also been carried out according to union size. The aim of this approach is to acknowledge that certain rules and structures may be more likely to be adopted by unions of different sizes.

For such analysis, the unions responding have been grouped into three size bands corresponding to the TUC rules on the composition of the General Council.11 In this report they are described as either ‘large’ (section A unions), ‘ medium’ (section B unions) or ‘ small’ (section C unions).

The large unions that responded to the audit are as follows:

• 11 “Section A shall consist of members from those organisations with a full numerical membership of 200,000 or more members. Each such organisation shall be entitled to nominate one or more of its members to be a member or members of the General Council and the number of members to which the organisations comprising Section A shall be determined by their full numerical membership on the basis of one per 200,000 members or part thereof provided that where the total number of women members of any organisation in Section A is 100,000 or more that organisation shall nominate at least one woman.
  Section B shall consist of members from those organisations with a full numerical membership of 30,000 up to 199,999 members. Each such organisation shall be entitled to nominate one of its members to be a member of Section B of the General Council.
  Section C shall consist of seven members of unions with fewer than 30,000 members.”

Where there is a statistic relating to the proportion of union members covered by a rule or structure, this is a percentage of the aggregate number of members of unions responding to the survey.

To monitor change in the areas covered by this report, some data is compared with the situation in 2018. However, comparisons are limited to instances where percentages are changed substantially. This is because the small size of the population covered by the survey (41 respondent unions in 2022 and 38 in 2018) means a difference of just one or two unions will show up as a noticeable change in percentage figures. A second problem is the subjective nature of some questions, which means unions’ responses might not be fully consistent from one audit to the next and cannot always be meaningfully compared.

Two questionnaires

There is a further complication in that, while all TUC unions are sent the main audit questionnaire, those with fewer than 12,000 members are given the option of completing an abbreviated version of the questionnaire. Four of the 41 respondents chose to do this in 2022 (see Appendix 1) while three out of 38 did so in 2018.

Where questions were covered in only one of the questionnaires, this is indicated in the report text.