The Employment Rights Bill, introduced to Parliament on 10 October 2024, represents a significant overhaul of employment legislation in the UK.
This comprehensive bill aims to modernise and enhance workers’ rights, impacting both employers and employees across various sectors. The proposals are evolving as the Bill works its way through Parliament and various consultations.
Key provisions of the Employment Rights Bill:
- Day-One Employment Rights: employees will be granted rights from the first day of employment, including protection against unfair dismissal and entitlements to paternity, parental, and bereavement leave.
- Flexible Working Requests: the bill expands the right to request flexible working arrangements, requiring employers to provide reasonable grounds for any refusals.
- Regulation of Zero-Hours Contracts: to curb exploitative practices, the Bill introduces measures ensuring workers, including agency workers, on zero-hours contracts and those on contracts with low guaranteed hours receive reasonable notice of shifts and compensation for cancellations.
- Enhanced Sick Pay: Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) will strengthened by removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period, making SSP accessible from the first day of sickness, and expanded to include workers.
- Collective redundancy consultation: changing the threshold for multi-site employers proposing redundancies and doubling the potential penalty payable.
- Fire and rehire: make it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee because they refused to accept varied contract terms or to replace them with another employee on the varied terms, except those in dire financial straights.
- Protection Against Sexual Harassment: the duty on employers will be converted to a duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, including harassment by third parties.
- Trade Union Rights: the bill repeals certain restrictions on trade unions, facilitating easier recognition and collective bargaining processes.
- Fair Pay Agreements: provisions are made for establishing Fair Pay Agreements in sectors like adult social care, aiming to standardise pay and conditions.
Implications for Employers and Employees:
The introduction of the Employment Rights Bill requires that employers review and revise their current contracts, policies and practices to ensure compliance with the new legislation. Employers can begin to prepare by reviewing and starting to implement changes to practices, including hiring, performance management and auditing and implementing preventative measures to prevent sexual harassment.
Find out more information about the Bill and how you can prepare using the resources below.
Resources:
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