The publication of the Labour Party’s Manifesto seeks to implement ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People’ in full, along with some additional proposed changes, should they be elected to power following the UK General Election.
On 24 May 2024, the Labour Party published ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People’ outlining their updated proposals for employment law reform in the UK.
This article highlights Labour’s key proposals for employment law from their Manifesto as well as looking at other significant employment law proposals from ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People’, following the Manifesto pledge to implement this in full.
Key proposals to take from the Manifesto:
- Banning exploitative zero-hours contracts.
- Ending fire and rehire practices, except in circumstances where the business is required to restructure in order to remain viable, where there is no alternative.
- Removal of the qualifying periods for basic individual rights for all workers including protection against unfair dismissal, redundancy, sick pay and parental leave, which will be available from day one of employment; although, the New Deal suggests that this will not prevent employers from operating probationary periods to assess new hires.
- Create a Single Enforcement Body to enforce workers’ rights.
- Changes to the remit of the Low Pay Commission to take into account the cost of living when determining the national minimum wage and the removal of age bands so that all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage.
- Establish a Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector for collective bargaining.
Additional changes from the Manifesto, not contained in the New Deal:
- Strengthening protections from maternity and menopause discrimination and sexual harassment.
- Introduction of a Race Equality Act, extending the right to make equal pay claims to Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority people.
- Strengthen protections against dual discrimination and introducing a right to bring a claim for dual discrimination where someone claims that they have been discriminated against where they have two protected characteristics.
Key proposed changes from the New Deal, not contained in the Manifesto
Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People makes a number of other key proposals for employment law reform in the UK, including:
- Consultation on the creation of a single status of ‘worker’ and a transition towards a two-part framework for employment status, to include all workers and employees, except for the genuinely self-employed.
- An extension of the time limits within which employees are able to bring any claim in the Employment Tribunal from three months to six months.
- A right for everyone to have a regular contract that reflects those hours normally worked, based on a twelve-week reference period.
- A mandatory requirement for employers with more than 250 staff to produce reports on their ethnicity and disability pay gaps.
- A mandatory requirement for employers with more than 250 employees to produce Menopause Action Plans.
- Strengthen Statutory Sick Pay for all workers including self-employed and make this available to all workers from day one of sickness, removing the lower earnings eligibility threshold.
- Introducing the ‘right to switch off’, giving workers and employers the opportunity to have constructive conversations and work together to develop workplace policies or contractual terms.
- Making flexible working the default from day one for all workers, except where it is not reasonably feasible.
- Introducing the right to bereavement leave for all workers.
- A right for trade unions to access workplaces, in a regulated and responsible manner, for recruitment and organising purposes.
- Making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who is pregnant for six months after her return, except in specific circumstances.
- Strengthen redundancy rights and protections, for example, by ensuring the right to redundancy consultation is determined by the number of people impacted across the business rather than in one workplace.
- Repealing the Trade Union Act 2016 and the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023.
For more information or advice on this or any other employment law query, please call our Employment Law Department on 0800 118 1500.
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