The King’s Speech – What is next for employment law?

Accompanying the announcements in the King’s Speech were Background Briefing Notes.

The Government is proposing the introduction of two new employment Bills:

• The Employment Rights Bill which is intended to implement Labour’s New Deal for Working People (which we have previously written about here; and
• The Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

Employment Rights Bill

The Employment Rights Bill appears in the section Economic Stability and Growth of the Briefing Notes and includes commitments to the following:

• Banning “exploitative” zero-hour contracts;
• Ending “the scourges” of “Fire and Rehire” and “Fire and Replace”’ by providing effective remedies and replacing the previous Government’s statutory code;
• Making parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day 1 on the job for all workers (although this will not impact upon employers’ ability to operate probationary periods to assess new hires);
• Strengthening Statutory Sick Pay by removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period;
• Making flexible working the default from day-one for all workers, with employers required to accommodate this as far as is reasonable;
• Strengthening the protection for new mothers by making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return, except in specific circumstances;
• Establishing a new Single Enforcement Body to strengthen enforcement of workplace rights;
• Establishing a Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector and assessing how this could benefit other sectors;
• Reinstating the School Support Staff Negotiating Body to establish national terms and conditions, career progression routes, and fair pay rates;
• Updating trade union legislation removing unnecessary restrictions on trade union activity including the previous Government’s approach to minimum service levels and ensuring industrial relations are based around good faith negotiations and;
• Simplifying the process of statutory recognition and introducing a regulated route to ensure workers and union members have a reasonable right to access a union within workplaces.

The Briefing Notes state that there has been an increase in the number of people in less secure forms of work, including the number of zero hours contracts rising to over 1 million over the last decade. The Bill will provide additional security and predictability for these workers. Further, they also state that extending protections to workers from day one will encourage more workers to switch jobs, which they state, is associated with higher wages and productivity growth.

The Employment Rights Bill proposal also references the Government’s intention to deliver a “genuine living wage that accounts for the cost of living” and to remove “discriminatory age bands”.

Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill

This appears in the section Break Down the Barriers to Opportunity of the Briefing Notes.

The Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill intends to tackle inequality for ethnic minority and disabled people by:

• Enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people to make it easier for them to bring unequal pay claims and;
• Introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger employers (250+ employees). This will expose any pay gaps and enable companies to consider why such pay gaps exist and how to tackle them.

Comment

It is clear that the Government is motivated to implement employment reform quickly, intending that the Employment Rights Bill is introduced within the first 100 days of the new Parliament, so, possibly around mid-October 2024.

The Equality (Race and Disability) Bill will likely take longer as it is still considered a draft Bill.

Even though it may be many months before we see either of these Bills signed into law (possibly with amendments), and even longer before any changes are actually implemented, one thing is certain, we can expect significant changes ahead.

The Government intends to “work in close partnership with trade unions and business” to deliver the  New Deal and we will keep you updated.