What employment law changes is Labour likely to make?
The Labour Party's manifesto
All following its victory in the general election, the Labour Party has promised to implement all of the commitments that it set out in its plan to “Make Work Pay”. This 19-page document sets out a number of proposals, some of which are set out below:
1. Ending one-sided flexibility – Labour intends to ensure that all jobs provide a baseline level of security and propose to ban what they described as exploitative zero hours contracts.
2. The end of the practice of “fire and rehire”; which Labour sees as a way to effectively force employees to agree to lower pay and reduced terms.
3. A new obligation to inform employees of their right to join a trade union and this needs to be included in the contract of employment. Employers also need to remind staff of their right to do this on a regular basis.
4. A proposal to increase time limits for tribunal claims from three months to six months.
5. Unfair dismissal rights to apply from day one and not after two years as is the current position. The plan says that this will not prevent fair dismissal and it will be interesting to see how this works with the operation of probationary periods.
6. Other day one rights include the right to parental leave and flexible working by default.
7. Statutory Sick Pay will be extended to all workers from day one and the current three day waiting period will be removed.
8. Protection for women returning back from maternity leave to the effect that it would be unlawful to dismiss a woman within six months of her return to work.
9. A right to switch off from work – this will follow similar models to those already in place in Ireland and Belgium.
10. A new right to raise collective grievances.
11. Replacing the current three categories of employee, worker and self-employed with just worker and self-employed.
12. Strengthening of whistleblowing protection by updating protections for women who report sexual harassment at work.
This is a very long list of proposed changes and they are potentially very complex. It is doubtful that all (or any) of these will be on the statute book in 100 days. As is the usual case, the devil here will be in the detail and these new changes will have to be carefully and comprehensively drafted.
