Manuel Cortes
Manuel Cortes (born 2 May 1967) is a British trade unionist who led the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association (TSSA) as General Secretary from 2011 to 2022. He grew up in Gibraltar and did not speak English with his family. He left school with no qualifications and became an apprentice electrician. He joined a local union and earned technical qualifications. He studied engineering at Heriot-Watt University and later earned master’s degrees in Optical Electronics and Business Economics from the University of Strathclyde.
Cortes began his union career with the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union, which later merged into UNIFI and then Amicus. He spent a year as a fundraiser for Amnesty International. He joined the TSSA in March 1998.
He was elected General Secretary of the TSSA on 15 November 2011 for a five-year term and was re-elected in December 2016 with 66% of the vote (turnout 19%). In 2015, he endorsed Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party leadership election.
In 2022 he was accused of sexual harassment by a former TSSA employee. He denied the claim and an internal investigation did not uphold it. A 2023 report by a Labour Party member of the House of Lords, requested by the Trade Unions Congress, was critical of Cortes and other senior TSSA officials and supported the harassment allegations. Cortes and several other senior staff were dismissed after the report.
In June 2023, delegates at the TSSA annual conference rejected appeals from Cortes and from Luke Chester, the former interim organising director, after their dismissals for gross misconduct. Cortes spoke by video link during the appeal and removed his shirt, saying he had been made a scapegoat. The conference upheld the dismissals.
As of January 2026, the TSSA says matters between the union and Manuel Cortes have been resolved amicably.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 08:35 (CET).