Employment Rights

Recent Amendments

Amendments to new employment rights legislation have been published following weeks of consultation with businesses and trade unions. These amendments include suggestions from backbench MPs and opposition members calling on the Employment Rights Bill to go further.

The outcome of five government consultations are:

Agency workers to be included in the application of zero hours contracts measures

• Agency workers will be included in the ‘ban’ on zero hours contracts aiming to avoid agency work becoming a loophole. All workers, should be able to access a contract reflecting the hours they regularly work.

Statutory Sick Pay or 80% of Salary

• There will no longer be a 3-day waiting period for SSP, instead payment will be from day one of the illness and employees will receive SSP or 80% of their salary whichever is lower.

Strengthening remedies against abuse of rules on collective redundancy – ‘Fire and Rehire’

• The maximum period of the protective award will increase from 90 days to 180 days and further guidance for employers on consultation processes for collective redundancies will be issued.

Creating a Modern Framework for Industrial Relations

• The government is updating the legislative framework in which trade unions operate to align it with modern work practices.

Tackling non-compliance in the umbrella company market

• Ensuring workers can access comparable rights and protections when working through an umbrella company as they would when taken on directly by a recruitment agency.

 Other amendments include:

Domestic Abuse

• Statutory leave for victims of domestic abuse, with regulations providing for a minimum of ten days’ leave.
• Protection for workers from adverse treatment and dismissal on the grounds that they are, or are suspected to be, a person affected by domestic abuse.
• Requirement for employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent their workers from experiencing domestic abuse.

Caring

• Requirement for carers leave a paid entitlement
• The consideration of ‘Caring’ to be a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010
• Introduction of ‘Kinship Care’ and ‘Kinship care leave’

Family Friendly

• New rates of Statutory Maternity Pay, Statutory Paternity Pay, Statutory Adoption
• Pay, Statutory Shared Parental Pay and Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay.
• Requirement for companies with more than 250 employees to publish information
• about their parental leave and pay policies.
• Changes to paternity leave entitlement to 6 weeks to be taken within 52 weeks
• Extension of statutory adoption pay to the self-employed and contractors.

Right to be accompanied

• Expanded right to be accompanied by a certified companion at disciplinary and grievance hearings

Violence and harassment in the workplace

• A new duty on employers to protect all those working in their workplace from gender-based violence and harassment.
• A new duty on the Health and Safety Executive to develop a health and safety framework on violence and harassment and to issue guidance for employers about the protection of those facing violence and harassment on the basis of gender in the workplace.

Announced

Awaiting further details

• The Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 was introduced on 10 October 2024 but is yet to be ratified,  including:

  • Unfair dismissal protection: Currently, an employee must have worked for you for two continuous years before they can claim unfair dismissal. The Government plans to remove this so that employees will be protected from unfair dismissal from their first day of work. This “will not prevent employer from dismissing fairly or from using probationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes”. The Government will consult on introducing a 9-month statutory probation period, allowing for a proper assessment of an employee’s suitability for a role
  • Ban on Fire & Rehire: Otherwise known as dismissal and re-engagement. Practices of firing and rehiring under less favourable terms will be banned, except where genuinely necessary for the employer to remain solvent
  • Flexible Working: Will be the default from day one, where practical, unless the employer can justify otherwise. Employers will be expected to accommodate “as far as is reasonable”
  • Redundancy Consultation: Strengthen collective redundancy rights by ensuring employer obligations to consult on and notify 20 or more redundancies across a workforce, not just a single establishment

  The ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ outlined the Government’s future intentions, including:

  • Single Status of Worker: There are currently 3 types of employment status recognised (Employee, Worker, Self-Employed). The plan is to create a single class of worker for all but the genuinely self-employed

Implemented

Implementation dates announced – time to prepare

• Watch this space!

Recently Introduced

1 January 2024 – The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (REUL Act) removed the interpretive effects of retained EU law.

1 January 2024 – The Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023 came into force, bringing changes to the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the TUPE regulations and carryover of leave following sickness absence and statutory family-friendly leave was added to the Working Time Regulations.

1 July 2024 – The Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023 brought in in new rules permitting employers to consult directly with staff affected by TUPE.

18 July 2024 – A new statutory Code of Practice on “fire and re-hire”, called the “Code of Practice on Dismissal and Re-engagement” was introduced.

Content will be added as the changes are introduced, so keep checking back!