Trade Unions Against Discrimination

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ETUC TUAD - Trade Unions Against Discrimination

Intersectionality is crucial for understanding the forms of discrimination faced by individuals and workers — both within and beyond the workplace — whether based on “traditional” factors, socio-economic status or emerging grounds for possible unequal treatment. For Trade Unions across Europe, acknowledging intersectionality is essential for providing protection against injustice as well as effective equal opportunities for everyone in the EU. 

Social and legal systems must adequately address the different dimensions of discrimination and oppression and not fail to consider how these dimensions interrelate and overlap, focusing on the experiences of those who suffer from oppression.

While the topic of equality is very close to trade union hearts, there is a need to improve the intersectional dimension of discrimination both in the world of work and in EU societies.

Consistently, the ETUC has designed two innovative tools to develop an intersectional approach, to enhance trade unions’ inclusiveness: 

🡺 EMPOWERING TRADE UNIONS TO TACKLE INTERSECTIONAL DISCRIMINATION

a Compendium of good practices, lessons, tools and recommendations for institutional and social actors and decision-makers on both national and EU level to progress towards an intersectional approach and effectively detect, tackle and prevent discrimination both within and outside the workplace.

It is available in EN, FR, IT, ES.

🡺 INTERSECTIONALITY Toolkit 

developed to support trade unions to recognise and tackle intersectional discrimination, where different aspects of identity combine to shape unique forms of exclusion. 

It is available in EN, FR, IT, ES.

 

The TUAD Conference

The Conference held on 29 April 2025 in Berlin and kindly hosted by the DGB focused on intersectionality as a crucial dimension to address discriminations and achieve full equality in our increasingly complex societies. The Conference brought together trade unionists, policymakers, researchers and civil society organisations at both the EU and national levels to discuss this pressing challenge. Additionally, it focused on designing EU-wide frameworks and developing practical tools to strengthen the role of trade unions in fighting discrimination and creating more inclusive Europe within and outside workplaces.The Agenda  of the event included several trade union leaders, high level representatives of European civil society organisations and EU institutions.

 

The TUAD Project

Over the last 2 years (June 2023-May 2025), the ETUC has implemented a number of actions as part of a project called " Trade Unions against Discrimination" in cooperation with its affiliates and also involving external experts from civil society and academia. The actions included the organisation of 5 learning seminars focusing on a specific theme:

The collected experience and material have provided the basis for both the Compendium and the Toolkit.

The main objectives of the project have been:

  1. 📢Raising awareness of the intersectional discrimination and contributing to the shift of understanding of discrimination from a largely individual to a more structural level

  2. ⤴️Enhancing the Trade Union capacity to detect and combatting and preventing discrimination at the workplace

  3.  🤝Building synergies among Trade Unions and Civil Society Organisations to mainstream equality at the workplace and strengthening the workers' perspective in national and EU policymaking.