Changes on the horizon? The Labour Party’s manifesto could mean big changes for employers
Thursday 27th June 2024
What could a Labour win in the general election next month mean for employment rights?
On review of the Labour Party manifesto there are a number of pledges which would have a significant impact on employment rights and keep HR departments very busy in the coming months.
We’ve summarised the key employment law proposals below:
| Proposal | What does this mean? |
| Raising wages for workers and end in-work poverty | – Increasing National Living Wage to at least £10 per hour for all workers. Removing age bands to ensure every adult worker benefits. – Working with the Single Enforcement Body and HMRC and ensuring they have the powers necessary to make sure the living wage is properly enforced, including penalties for non-compliance. – Strengthening the law to ensure hospitality workers receive their tups in full and workers decide how tips are allocated. – Banning unpaid internships, except when they are part of an education or training course. – Ensuring travel time in sectors with multiple working sites is paid. |
| Creating a single status of ‘worker’ | All but the genuinely self employed would be classed as ‘workers’, regardless of sector wage or contract type and be afforded the same basic rights and protections. This includes sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave, protection against unfair dismissal etc. |
| All workers will have day one rights on the job | Workers’ access to basic rights and protections against unfair dismissal, for parental leave, flexible working and sick pay, will not be subject to qualifying period of work. |
| Changes to SSP | It is proposed to remove the lower earnings limit, so SSP is available to all and the 3 day waiting period is also to be removed. |
| Strengthening rights and protections for workers and the self-employed | – Strengthening existing rights including for pregnant workers, whistleblowers, workers made redundant, workers making unfair dismissal claims and those subject to TUPE processes. – SSP to be available to all workers as above, and the self-employed. – Strengthening rights for self-employed workers including the right to a written contract, action to deal with late payments, and extending health and safety and blacklisting protections. |
| Banning zero-hours contracts and giving workers predictable contracts | – Banning contracts which are zero hours, or which don’t have a minimum number of guaranteed hours. – Workers working regular hours for 12 weeks or more will gain the right to a regular contract. – All workers to get reasonable notice of any change in shifts or working time. |
| Outlawing fire and rehire | They proposed to do this by: – improving information and consultation processes to make employers reach agreements about contractual changes with their workforce, – adapting unfair dismissal and redundancy legislation to prevent workers being dismissed for failing to agree a worse contract, and – ensuring that notice and ballot requirements on trade union activity do not inhibit defensive action to protect terms and conditions of employment where fire and rehire tactics are being used. |
| Changes to redundancy rights and TUPE | – Ensuring the right to redundancy consultation is determined by the number of people impacted across the business rather than in one workplace. – Strengthening the existing set of rights and protections for workers subject to TUPE processes. |
| Introducing the ‘right to switch off’ | Workers would have the right not to be contacted by their employer outside of working hours and new rights protecting workers from remote surveillance will be introduced. |
| Stronger family friendly rights | Extending statutory maternity and paternity leave, introducing the right to bereavement leave and strengthening pregnant workers’ protections from dismissal for six months after their return from maternity leave. |
| Updating trade union legislation | Removing restrictions on trade union activity and introducing a new duty on employers to inform all new workers of their right to join a union. |
| Strengthening the law to enforce workplace rights | – Allowing workers to bring civil cases for breaches of statutory health and safety regulation and allowing workers to recover legal representation costs from negligent employers. – Extending the time period for bringing claims to employment tribunals. – Ensuring workers receive compensation without statutory limits is they suffer loss due to their employers’ breaches of contract. – Allowing employees to collectively raise grievances about conduct in their place of work to ACAS and introducing tougher penalties for employers who fail to comply with tribunal orders, as well as personal liability for company directors. |
| Tackling workplace harassment | Employers would be required to create and maintain workplaces and working conditions free from harassment, including by third parties. |
| Greater protections for carers | Strengthening the rights of workers to respond to family emergencies with paid family and carers leave, the right to flexible working and greater ability for workers to enforce those rights. |
| Closing gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps and to enhance socioeconomic rights | – Allowing equal pay comparisons across employers where men and women carry out comparable work. – Enforcing the requirement to report and eliminate pay gaps and requiring employers to devise and implement plans to remove these inequalities. – Ensuring outsourced workers are included in gender pay gap reporting and pay ration reporting. – Mandatory publication of ethnicity pay gaps for companies with more than 250 staff. – Requiring large employers (over 250 staff) to produce Menopause Action Plans, setting out how they will support employees through the menopause. |
Comment
It is clear that a Labour government could mean some very big changes to employee rights and employer obligations across the UK. It is therefore key that employers are aware of the above changes and, depending on the outcome on 4 July, are prepared for wholesale changes to HR operations and policies over the coming months.
In terms of when these changes come into force, Labour has proposed that these will be introduced through new employment legislation within 100 days – so this could be as soon as the end of October / early November 2024.
Much of the above is new territory for employers. For assistance and advice on these changes if/when they develop, please speak to a member of the employment team who will be happy to assist.
