King’s Speech Signals Advances on Worker Rights

Last week at the state opening of Parliament, the King’s Speech confirmed that the new government will push forward with plans to introduce “a new deal for workers” by banning exploitative practices and enhancing employment rights” in a new Employment Rights Bill. Plans were also announced for a Skills England Bill and draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

The new employment rights bill seeks to ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, end the scourges of “fire and re-hire” and “fire and replace”, make parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day one for all workers and strengthen statutory sick pay by removing lower earnings limit as well as waiting period. The day 1 protection from Unfair Dismissal would be a huge step forward and will tackle-head on those unscrupulous employers who hire workers and sack them for spurious reasons just before their rights to unfair dismissal matures at the 2-year service point.

The Bill also seeks to make flexible working default from day one for all, an issue that the CWU and other unions has campaigned for – under the proposed changes employers will be required to accommodate flexible working as far as is reasonably possible to reflect the modern workplace.

Protections for new mothers will also be introduced by making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work, except in specific circumstances.
Trade union legislation will also be amended so it is fit for a modern economy, including removal of minimum service levels and simplifying the process of statutory recognition by introducing a regulated route to ensure workers and union members have a reasonable right to access a union within workplaces.

It also confirms that the government “will deliver a genuine living wage that accounts for the cost of living and remove the discriminatory age bands to ensure every adult worker benefits”.

Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

The King’s Speech also announced that the government will publish legislation in draft to “enshrine the full right to equal pay in law” for ethnic minorities and disabled people through a new draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

This means new laws will make it mandatory reporting for larger employers (those with 250 plus employees) to report their ethnicity and disability pay gap. It is envisaged that surfacing pay gaps will enable companies to constructively consider why they exist and how to tackle them.

The draft bill is likely to extend and apply to Great Britain mirroring measures in the Equality Act 2010 relating to equal pay and gender pay reporting.

We must now wait for the detail of the Employment Rights Bill when it is published; the government has stated that it will “work in close partnership with trade unions and business to deliver our New Deal and invite their views on how best we can put our plans into practice”.

The draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill is likely to be subject to extensive consultation and the government will need to give careful consideration as to how its proposals are set out in legislation, given the complexities highlighted by the previous government’s consultation on proposed ethnicity pay gap reporting and which ultimately concluded in a “voluntary” reporting approach to tackle ethnicity pay gaps, supported by government guidance.