Within the King’s Speech on 17 July 2024, the new Labour Government set out its legislative agenda for the next few months. The reform of employment law was a pillar of Labour’s election campaign, and so it is no surprise it was referenced within the King’s speech:
“My Government is committed to making work pay and will legislate to introduce a new deal for working people to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights”.
Accompanying the announcements in the King’s Speech were Background Briefing Notes.
The Government is proposing the introduction of two new employment Bills:
Employment Rights Bill
The Employment Rights Bill appears in the section Economic Stability and Growth of the Briefing Notes and includes commitments to the following:
Banning “exploitative” zero-hour contracts;
Ending “the scourges” of “Fire and Rehire” and “Fire and Replace”‘ by providing effective remedies and replacing the previous Government’s statutory code;
Making parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day one on the job for all workers (although this will not impact upon employers’ ability to operate probationary periods to assess new hires);
Strengthening Statutory Sick Pay by removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period;
Making flexible working the default from day one for all workers, with employers required to accommodate this as far as is reasonable;
Strengthening the protection for new mothers by making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return, except in specific circumstances;
Establishing a new Single Enforcement Body to strengthen enforcement of workplace rights;
Establishing a Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector and assessing how this could benefit other sectors;
Reinstating the School Support Staff Negotiating Body to establish national terms and conditions, career progression routes, and fair pay rates;
Updating trade union legislation, removing unnecessary restrictions on trade union activity, including the previous Government’s approach to minimum service levels, and ensuring industrial relations are based around good faith negotiations and;
Simplifying the process of statutory recognition and introducing a regulated route to ensure workers and union members have a reasonable right to access a union within workplaces.
The Briefing Notes state that there has been an increase in the number of people in less secure forms of work, including the number of zero-hours contracts rising to over 1 million over the last decade. The Bill will provide additional security and predictability for these workers. Further, they also state that extending protections to workers from day one will encourage more workers to switch jobs, which they state is associated with higher wages and productivity growth.
The Employment Rights Bill proposal also references the Government’s intention to deliver a “genuine living wage that accounts for the cost of living” and to remove “discriminatory age bands”.
Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill
This appears in the Break Down the Barriers to Opportunity section of the Briefing Notes.
The Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill intends to tackle inequality for ethnic minority and disabled people by:
Enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people to make it easier for them to bring unequal pay claims and;
Introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger employers (250+ employees). This will expose any pay gaps and enable companies to consider why such pay gaps exist and how to tackle them.
Comment
It is clear that the Government is motivated to implement employment reform quickly, intending that the Employment Rights Bill is introduced within the first 100 days of the new Parliament, so possibly around mid-October 2024.
The Equality (Race and Disability) Bill will likely take longer as it is still considered a draft Bill.
Even though it may be many months before we see either of these Bills signed into law (possibly with amendments) and even longer before any changes are implemented, one thing is certain: we can expect significant changes ahead.
The Government intends to “work in close partnership with trade unions and business” to deliver the New Deal, and we will keep you updated.