King's Speech: plans for employment law

Summary:?Government plans to legislate to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights.

In this morning’s King’s Speech, Labour set out the legislative agenda for their first months in government. The King’s Speech itself made passing reference to “legislation to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights”. The Prime Minister’s briefing notes on the King’s Speech give the detail, and at first glance it certainly seems like Labour are hitting the ground running with implementing their ‘New Deal for Working People’ in full. ?- According to the?briefing notes , the Employment Rights Bill will include:

?- Making parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day 1 (subject to special rules for probationary periods)

?- Banning zero-hour contracts, making sure that workers have a right to a contract that reflects the hours they regularly work

?- Ending ‘fire and rehire’ and ‘fire and replace’ by reforming the law and replacing the statutory code

?- Removing the lower earnings limit and waiting period for Statutory Sick pay

?- Making flexible working the default for all workers from day one and requiring employers to accommodate this as far as is reasonable

?- Making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after she comes back to work (with certain exceptions)

?- Creating the Fair Work Agency to enforce workplace rights

?- Introducing a Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector

?- Repealing the law on minimum service levels in relation to industrial action

?- Simplifying the process of statutory recognition for trade unions

?- Introducing a right for workers and union members to access a union within workplaces

A slight word of caution on the briefing notes. They state that "the Bill will deliver on policies as set out in the Plan to Make Work Pay" and that "the Plan includes commitments to the following"?– going on to give a list, much of which is set-out above. However, they don’t specifically say that all aspects of the Plan listed will actually be in the Bill itself! This may just be word-play. We will need to wait for the Bill itself to know for sure.

Separately, a draft?Equality (Race and Disability) Bill?proposes to “enshrine the full right to equal pay law” for disabled people and ethnic minorities. The same bill also proposes mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting. Both of these proposals are fraught with practical difficulty.

Change is definitely afoot! We now await the draft legislation itself.