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The Labour Party's proposed Employment Rights Bill is set to significantly change the UK's employment landscape with ambitious aims to strengthen workers' rights, reshape employment status definitions, and create a fairer working environment.
These changes are likely to have a substantial impact on how schools and trusts manage their workforce, so it’s essential for employers to understand the potential impact of changes to employment law.
The Employment Rights Bill: A comprehensive overview
The Employment Rights Bill covers a range of issues, including minimum wage regulations, probationary periods, and collective bargaining rights. It seeks to address concerns surrounding zero-hours contracts, unfair dismissal, and controversial 'fire and rehire' practices. Additionally, the bill aims to enhance trade union rights, improve redundancy protection, and clarify employment status classifications.
Key provisions
The bill outlines several provisions to enhance worker protections and create a fairer working environment. The key provisions are:
- Day one rights: The bill proposes that triggers for unfair dismissal protection, sick pay and parental leave are removed, making payment available from the first day of employment.
- Flexible working: Employees can currently request flexible working from day one; however, the revised bill could see flexible working become a day one right if arrangements are ‘reasonably feasible’. This would strengthen flexible working arrangements, and potentially replace the 8 business reasons an employer can use to reject a request with fairer terms.
- Zero-hours contracts: The bill seeks to ban exploitative zero-hours contracts. This would not automatically make zero-hour contracts unlawful, but would create more stringent guidelines on their use.
- Fire and rehire: The government clearly intends for 'fire and rehire' practices to become unlawful. They recently introduced provisions created by the previous government to strengthen the dismissal and re-engagement code of practice.
- Employment status: Though it may take a few years to implement, the bill proposes to merge employee and worker status, potentially extending unfair dismissal protection to a broader population.
- Collective redundancy: An important point to consider for large trusts or local authorities, is that the legislation plans to amend collective redundancy consultation thresholds, triggering them based on the number of people impacted across the employer's business rather than within each specific establishment.
- Post-maternity protection: The previous government introduced enhanced redundancy protection for those recently returning from maternity leave. However, Labour has announced they intend to strengthen this, making it unlawful to dismiss a woman six months after returning from leave. It’s likely they will create an ‘exceptional circumstances’ reason that would include gross misconduct and the end of fixed-term contracts, but this is yet to be defined.
- TUPE: Contracting out will be subject to a ‘public interest test’ to determine if it is value for money, impacts the quality of the provision, and meets economic and social goals. Less favourable terms will be prohibited for new employees recruited into organisations that have TUPE’d from local authority employees. This could introduce a need to harmonise terms before a TUPE transfer, lengthening the process and reducing the incentive for external providers.
Legislative process and expected timeline
With many changes to consider, we expect to see a draft of the revised Employments Rights Bill by October, keeping to Labour’s pledge to introduce legislation within the first 100 days.
While Labour aims to act quickly, implementation of these reforms is likely to be gradual due to the parliamentary processes:
- Initial steps: The bill must go through both houses of parliament before being signed into law.
- Secondary legislation: Many provisions will require substantial secondary legislation or codes of practice to flesh out operational details.
- Consultation: Labour has promised a full consultation on implementing its New Deal for Working People.
- Phased implementation: Some changes, such as parental leave reforms and merging employee and worker status, may take longer and require detailed prior consultation.
Implications for employers and employees
The proposed changes will undoubtedly significantly impact on both employees and employers. The biggest impacts we anticipate are:
For employees:
- Enhanced job security and protection from the start of employment
- Improved work-life balance through flexible working rights
- Better support for new parents and those requiring sick leave
- Increased protections against unfair dismissals.
For employers:
- Increased recruitment risks due to day one unfair dismissal rights
- Need for more robust performance management processes for new recruits
- Potential changes to employment contracts and people management policies
- Potential increase in consultation time for TUPE transfers and redundancies
- Possible increase in employment tribunal claims.
It's important to note that the government has stated that employers will still use probationary periods to assess new hires, although the details of how this will work in practice are yet to be confirmed.
We advise you to review your probation policies and empower your middle and senior leaders to conduct thorough performance management and inductions for all staff and new starters.
Strengthening worker voice and representation
The Labour Party's proposed Employment Rights Bill aims to empower workers and strengthen their collective voice in the workplace. This section explores the key reforms proposed to enhance trade union rights, promote collective bargaining, and improve whistleblowing protections.
Trade union reforms
The bill proposes significant changes to trade union regulations, aiming to remove what it describes as "unnecessary red tape on trade union activity" and make it easier for trade unions to represent workers effectively. These reforms include:
- Repealing the Trade Union Act 2016 and the minimum service level legislation introduced in 2023. This would remove the need for a minimum turnout in strike ballots and the thresholds required.
- Introducing secure and private electronic balloting for union votes. This is expected to simplify the ballot process, increasing participation/turnout. It would also lead to reduced costs for unions to run a ballot, and therefore remove a barrier for them to hold more.
- Granting trade unions new rights to access workplaces for recruitment and organising purposes.
- Imposing a duty on employers to inform workers of their right to join a trade union. This is likely to be in the form of a mandatory contractual provision and regular reminders to employees. EPM will review model contracts to ensure they comply with this legislation if enacted.
School Support Staff Negotiation Body (SSSNB)
This will re-introduce the SSSNB that was put in place by the previous Labour government and repealed in 2010 before it was enforced. It will be a collective negotiation body to cover national terms and conditions, pay, training, and career progression routes.
The SSSNB in 2010 would have applied to local authority maintained schools only, however, it is expected that this will cover academies too this time.
With the current devolved system, it's still being determined at this stage whether this will only apply to England.
Conclusion
The Labour Party's proposed Employment Rights Bill clearly aims to create a more balanced and equitable work environment and benefit millions of workers across the country.
While the bill's implementation timeline remains uncertain, its far-reaching implications are clear. Schools will need to adapt their policies and practices, while employees stand to gain improved job security and work-life balance. As the bill moves through the legislative process, schools must stay informed and prepare for these potential changes in employment law.
To help guide you through this evolving policy landscape, customers can find our model template policies on our EPM Customer Hub. Our model policies will be updated in line with legislative changes as they take effect.
