Employment Law: What changes can we expect under a new Labour Party Government? | July 2024
We are entering a new era in employment law following a change in government; as the Labour Party take the helm.
The Labour Party has outlined several significant changes to UK employment law as part of their "Plan to Make Work Pay" initiative. These proposals aim to enhance workers' rights, increase pay transparency, and improve working conditions.
Here are some of the key changes that they intend to implement:
1. Banning "Fire and Rehire" Practices: Labour plans to outlaw the controversial practice of dismissing employees only to rehire them on less favourable terms. In a nutshell, this would involve updating unfair dismissal and redundancy legislation to offer greater protection to workers.
2. Minimum Wage and Pay Reforms: Labour intends to link the National Living Wage (NLW) to the cost of living, ensuring regular adjustments based on economic conditions. They also propose abolishing the lower wage band for workers aged 18-20, establishing a uniform minimum wage for all ages.
3. Day-One Employment Rights: New rights from the first day of employment would include protections against unfair dismissal, entitlement to statutory sick pay, and redundancy pay. The qualifying period for these rights would be removed, granting immediate access upon employment.
4. Employment Tribunal Changes: The time limit for bringing employment tribunal claims could be extended from three to six months, and the statutory caps on compensation could be removed, potentially increasing the compensation amounts awarded in successful claims.
5. Strengthening Pay Gap Reporting: Labour plans to introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for companies with over 250 employees. Additionally, they propose including outsourced workers in gender pay gap reports, broadening the scope of current reporting requirements.
6. Enhanced Union Rights: Labour seeks to simplify the process for union recognition, allowing for easier organisation and representation. They also plan to repeal restrictive legislation on industrial action and introduce electronic balloting for union votes.
7. Work-Life Balance and Surveillance: Proposals include a "right to disconnect" to ensure employees can switch off from work communications outside regular hours, and protections against unjustified surveillance technologies.
8. Flexible Working and Zero-Hours Contracts: Labour could make flexible working the default option from day one and aim to eliminate what can be regarded by some as exploitative zero-hours contracts by ensuring regular working patterns lead to stable contracts.
These reforms, while ambitious, are subject to consultation and legislative processes that could take time. Labour has pledged to introduce key elements of their plan within the first 100 days of taking office, but the full implementation will likely be more gradual due to the complexities involved.
We will be reporting more on these changes in future newsletters, as the dates for this new employment legislation is known. Watch this space!
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