Mary Walker quoted by The Grocer discussing the Employment Rights Bill
Monday 28th October 2024
Mary Walker, partner and employment expert has been quoted in a feature article for food and drink retail magazine The Grocer discussing the impact of the new Employment Rights Bill.
The proposed bill, announced by the new Labour government shortly after the July general election, has been viewed as one of the biggest “shake-ups” for workers and employment rights in recent times.
Unions have welcomed the bill, which addresses several issues, such as fire and rehire provisions, “day one” rights, sick pay, flexible working, and maternity rights.
Fire and rehire provisions
To address fire and rehire practices to force contract changes, the bill plans to make it automatically unfair to dismiss employees who don’t agree to the new terms.
Mary commented: “A dismissal will also be unfair if the employer replaces the employee with another person carrying out substantially the same duties who is willing to accept the varied terms.
“The hurdles to doing so will be significantly greater than dismissing employees altogether by reason of redundancy or renegotiation,” she added.
Collective redundancy
The bill also aims to address the laws on collective redundancy, including lifting the cap of the protective award if an employer is found not to have properly followed process.
“The leading cases on collective consultation are retail-based,” Mary highlighted.
Minimum wage
When it comes to planned measures around minimum wage, Mary explained: “Minimum wage will no longer be tapered by an individual’s age.
“Whilst this may not directly impact retailers due to the current wage battle in the sector, this will impact suppliers and increase production costs which will increase retailers’ bottom line,” said Mary.
You can read Mary’s comments alongside an analysis of the additional implications of measures proposed in the Employment Rights Bill online in The Grocer here (subscription required).
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