Britain’s biggest bank, Lloyds, has pledged “solidarity” with transgender staff after the Supreme Court ruled that trans women are not legally women under discrimination law. The Telegraph has more.
Executives at Lloyds Bank, which counts one in two British adults as customers, have backed transgender staff working at the company, saying they would support them during this “very tough time”.
It comes as businesses across Britain wrestle with the implications of a landmark Supreme Court judgment this week that ruled laws against sex-based discrimination should only apply to biological women.
The decision will herald a raft of changes around female-only spaces, and businesses are now grappling with how it will affect their female and transgender staff.
Hours after the judgment, Andrew Walton, Lloyds’s Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, posted on the bank’s intranet to say the lender would back its trans staff following the “unsettling” day.
“Thought I would come on here today with a note of support for our trans and non-binary colleagues on what I know will be an unsettling day following the UK Supreme Court decision,” he wrote on Lloyds’s Rainbow network, the bank’s internal group for LGBTQ+ people, according to messages reviewed by the Telegraph.
“Please know that we cherish and celebrate you and we remain committed to inclusivity. If you’re a line manager, please be mindful of the potential impact on members of your team and be available to them. We are here to listen and support.”
Sharon Doherty, the Chief People and Places Officer at Lloyds, said in response to Mr Walton’s post: “Very well said. … Standing in solidarity at this very tough time.”
Both Mr Walton and Ms Doherty are among the most senior leaders at the bank, sitting on a 14-person executive committee headed by Charlie Nunn, the Chief Executive.
A former Lloyds employee who saw the messages but wishes to remain anonymous criticised the two executives for wading into the trans debate without presenting a balanced approach.
“If you are the Chief People Officer this is a political matter which has very strong feelings on both ideas,” they said.
“It is risky. What about the women who are fighting for their rights? Employers should look after everybody.”
Worth reading in full.
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They don’t seem to say what this “solidarity” entails in practical terms. Words are cheap.
As a boss I would never pontificate publicly in such a manner. I must feel solidarity with all of our employees, and treat them decently.
If I recall this same bank was bailed out in 2008 by millions of tax payers many of them real women, how quickly they have bitten the hand that fed them.
Excellent point, they did indeed get bailed out by us.
So they abuse our money to pay form DEI non jobber to virtue signal?
All word salad perfected by the failed K Harris !!! Hilarious.
Bud lite them, any female banking with Lloyds take your account away, it clearly is not a bank that recognises the biological female so let them be the bank to men who dress up as women,
Love the new verb ‘to Bud Lite’
Make that Snow Lite and the 7 customers
It is the only thing corporations fear – mass rejection of their products and services.
The only solidarity I want to see from any bank is the solidity to keep branches open, run a secure and efficient online platform, and (unlike the entire industry prior to 2008) shrewd investment of funds that doesn’t go for the quick buck or fleecing punters.
The worthies on the Lloyds executive committee need to focus energies on these core tasks, rather than firing off on the irrelevant.
Talking of irrelevancies and firings, the services of the Chief People & Places and Corporate Affairs Hangers-On can both be dispensed with.
Sorted.
The sign of the prancing arse.
So far as I can see, the only thing that has happened for Trans is that they have to stick to biological truth when it comes to describing their sex. They haven’t lost any rights, except for those they unilaterally stole from women in the first place. If they want to stop being Brian, and become Briony, what is it that we are now doing that means they are disadvantaged.? Did anyone care about the old fashioned women with cervixes when their rights were being taken from them, so that we can pander to a tiny number of people who appear to have lost touch with reality.
Exactly right. The trouble is that these large corporations have caved in to the small minority of activists who threaten them.
Strange how certain words set my teeth on edge. “Solidarity” (a union of interests, purposes or sympathies among members of a group) is one of the worst. It carries overtones of the ‘collective’ with it for me.
For biological women working for Lloyds ‘solidarity with transgender staff’ could reasonably be said to exclude them, again.
Truth. And this is why the women that support this toxic ideology are the biggest traitors to their fellow females of all. Basically on a par with those ‘morality police’ evil bitches in Iran;
”Gender ideology reduces femaleness to a fetish while securing, as a protected ‘identity,’ predatory sexual behaviour.
There is not a single redeeming quality about it. At the barest bones, the transgender belief system creates a protected class of male sexual predators while stripping women and girls of their safeguarding protections and basic humanity.” Genevieve Gluck.
Sadly I don’t have an account with this bank.
Therefore, I can’t close it in protest
“Please know that we cherish and celebrate you….”
This is a business, not a mental health institution or “happy clappy” religious organisation. As a business, its objective is to make money and grow the company for the benefit of its shareholders.
Why on earth would the COAO send out this kind of pathetic “we feel your pain” message saying the business “cherishes” a particular section of its workforce – let alone celebrates their sexuality and their biological delusions?
I don’t “cherish” gays or trans as a block: they are individuals. Some are probably very nice; others less so. I certainly don’t “celebrate” them. They’re just people who are different from the majority and that’s not a cause for celebration.
This kind of nonsense has gone on for far too long. I used to be very tolerant of gays and the one trans-woman I used to work with …. but the gay and trans militant tendency has destroyed that.
‘Chief People and Places Officer’???
what is that?
an immigration officer?
no! It is a euphemism for a DEI job.
in other words – a non job.
Go woke go broke.
It is about time someone [me in this case] started asking the awkward questions about why so many autistic people feel they are trans and homosexual. There is disproportionate representation of autistics in the ranks of the LGBT etc.
Autism is being caused but anyone who says they know by what gets cancelled immediately. This is despite the recognised SEND crisis costing the UK £10billion annually and overwhelming the NHS.
And we also need to ask whether there has been any investigation of whether there are increases across the board in the ranks of the LGBT etc and if so what might be causing it.
A doctor told me recently that women who take oral contraceptives should stop urinating in toilets as the hormones end up back in the drinking water supply.
Pregnant women and children are getting a diet of womens’ hormones in their water supply. This cannot be good for normal development of children.
Add to this the highly politicised Far Left whose tentacles intrude into every area in which they can engage their favourite pastime as rent-a-mob drop-of-a-hat instant demonstrators at instant demonstrations – whether Gaza, Palestine, Pride, Trans – you name it they will be there and at it.
A few years ago autistics who did not like the idea they are brain damaged and victims of vaccines and/or environmental toxins started claiming there was nothing wrong with being ‘neuro-diverse’ – that they are just different and nothing more – so we all need to be tolerant.
The problem with the ever increasing demands on the ‘neuro-typical’ [ie most of the rest of us] is it quells the calls for investigation of causes of the ‘neuro-diverse’.
There is something wrong with our contaminated food and water supplies and what effects are those contaminants having on modern children? How many are injured?
Chief People and Places Officer
People with bullshit job titles probably reflect that.
They don’t mind which slot you put your money in
. Never banked with them and NEVER will.