Labour's employment policy plans: good work

In this blog, we will be focusing on the Government’s plans to promote good working practices and to enhance workers’ statutory rights. In previous blogs, we’ve provided an outline of their planned changes to equality law and collective rights.

An Employment Rights Bill was announced in the King’s Speech on 17 July. Amongst other reforms, we expect the new Bill to include some of the following changes:

Basic day one rights

A significant reform planned by the new Government is to make key employment protections, notably the right to bring an unfair dismissal claim, a day one right. If this reform is included in the new Bill, it will have a significant impact on how employers should manage conduct and performance issues for those with less than 2 years’ service.

Flexible and atypical working

The last government amended legislation to make the right to request flexible working a day one right and to make certain procedural changes. The Labour Government has stated that they intend to build upon this to ensure it is more difficult for employers to refuse a request and to ensure that workers can benefit from flexi-time contracts and hours which accommodate school terms. Many commentators believe the latest reforms did not go far enough and so it will be interesting to see how Labour intends to approach this.

Furthermore, the Government has committed to banning “exploitative” zero hours contracts - watered down from their initial stance to ban all zero hours contracts. It remains to be seen how this ban will be executed in practice. The last government introduced a right for certain workers to request a more predictable working pattern. This new right is scheduled to come into force in September. The Government could choose to scrap this new right and make alternative changes. However, most commentators believe they will enhance this new right instead to increase protection for atypical workers. New protections proposed include a right to reasonable notice of shifts, and to compensation for cancelled shifts.

Family friendly rights

The Government has also stated that it will review the parental leave system to ensure it best supports working families. Prior to the election, Labour committed to making parental rights a day one right and to increase maternity discrimination protection for working mothers. They also intend to extend the right to bereavement leave to all workers and intend to review the new right to unpaid carer’s leave to assess the benefits of offering paid carer’s leave. There has not been a firm commitment to amend the legislation so that carer’s leave is paid but this is certainly on the Government’s radar. 

National Minimum Wage and Statutory Sick Pay

The new Government also has an eye on payments being made to workers. They have stated that they intend to boost the National Minimum Wage to ensure this is at a level workers can live on. They have also committed to extending Statutory Sick Pay to remove the lower earnings limit and to remove the waiting period. These reforms will be a relief to workers struggling with the cost of living. However, further detail is needed for employers to assess the overall impact of these proposals.

Right to switch off

Finally, Labour has promoted its plan to introduce a new “right to switch off.” Recognising there are more homeworkers which can affect work-life balance, the Government has committed to introducing a model similar to those already in Ireland and Belgium. Interestingly, in Ireland in particular, the right to disconnect is not limited to homeworking or technological devices and so has had wider reaching consequences. It therefore remains to be seen how the Government will choose to approach this new right.

As with all other proposals made pre-election, we will need to “watch this space.” Many of the above proposals have been debated before, particularly following the 2017 Taylor Review. The Government has stated it intends to move quickly to introduce these reforms. We will therefore need to see what further detail is contained in the Employment Rights Bill when it arrives.

The Government has also committed to forming a single enforcement body to enforce worker’s rights. This enforcement body will have powers to inspect workplaces and take action against employers for unfair or exploitative practices. It is likely to take some time to organise a single enforcement body and so the above reforms are expected to come into force more quickly.