Employment law:
Review of the year 2024

First published in October, this Bill represents the biggest shake-up of employment law for a generation. It is currently at committee stage in the House of Commons, though most of the measures are unlikely to take effect before autumn 2026.

The Government’s plans include significant changes to the law of unfair dismissal, new rules on collective consultation and fire and re-hire as well as some important changes to equality law. There are also extensive measures to improve the rights of atypical workers.

The Bill would repeal most of the trade union legislation introduced by the last Government and strengthen unions’ rights to access workplaces. It would also make it easier to secure compulsory union recognition and improve the protection for striking workers.

The duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of workers in the course of their employment took effect on 26 October 2024. This duty will be strengthened when the Employment Rights Bill becomes law, but in the meantime there is still plenty of compliance work to undertake.

The rules for calculating and paying statutory holiday entitlement for irregular hours and part-year workers changed for holiday years beginning on or after 1 April 2024. As holiday years often track the calendar year, that means for many workers the new rules will be taking effect on 1 January 2025.

Several changes were made to family-friendly rights with effect from 1 April. These included giving all employees the right to request flexible working from the first day of their employment, rather than having to serve a 26 week qualifying period.

A decision from the EAT last spring emphasises the degree of support employers are expected to give workers who can no longer do their existing job because of a disability. This can include offering alternative employment with a trial period, if they cannot meet the normal selection criteria.

Over the summer there were some important developments relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements, including revised guidance from the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority. This guidance is not confined to the employment context, but NDAs remain common in settlement agreements.

As in previous years, there were many rulings on employment status in 2024. The most important was the latest word from the UK’s top court on how tribunals should adjudicate on these disputes, published in September 2024.

Court of Appeal issued new guidance last autumn on how employers should balance individual and workforce consultation when implementing redundancies, where the numbers involved do not reach the collective consultation threshold.

In what has provided to be a record year, the Supreme Court has given three rulings on different aspects of collective agreements in 2024. Of these, a ruling on the rectification of a mistake in a collective agreement probably has the most enduring significance.