{"id":2236,"date":"2023-10-24T11:02:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-24T10:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/?p=2236"},"modified":"2025-07-03T23:31:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T22:31:28","slug":"legal-article-202310","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/legal-article-202310\/","title":{"rendered":"Oct 2023 &#8211; Labour confirms plans for employment law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Labour\u2019s plans for radical reform of employment law were confirmed recently in a speech at the TUC conference.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>In anticipation of the next UK general election taking place in 2024, the Labour Party has been promising employment law reforms of a greater magnitude than, arguably, any time in the last 40 years.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a&nbsp;speech at the TUC conference in Liverpool recently, Labour&#8217;s deputy leader Angela Rayner gave a commitment to bring forward an employment rights bill within the first 100 days of Labour entering office.&nbsp;&nbsp;This is part of a promised \u201cNew Deal for Working People\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Labour\u2019s wide-ranging proposals for reform to date, include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul style=\"font-size:15px\"><li>Major changes to&nbsp;unfair dismissal protection, including the removal of the 2 year service requirement.<\/li><li>Proposal to&nbsp;ban zero hours contracts.<\/li><li>Proposals to balance work and home life, including the right to disconnect, greater flexible working rights and enhancing childcare leave entitlements.<\/li><li>Proposals to&nbsp;reform employment status, including removing the distinction between \u201cemployee\u201d and \u201cworker\u201d which currently exists; and ensuring all employees\/workers are entitled to a wide range of rights.<\/li><li>Far-reaching proposals to&nbsp;expand trade union rights, including sectoral collective bargaining and repealing various \u201canti-trade union\u201d laws, most notably repealing the Trade Union Act 2016 and the associated restrictions on taking industrial action.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The recent speech has confirmed many of these proposals.&nbsp;&nbsp;There was a particular focus on the trade union reforms, with Labour confirming that they would ask Parliament to repeal various \u201canti-trade union\u201d laws within their first 100 days.&nbsp;&nbsp;Other significant reforms were also listed, including day one basic rights, a ban on zero hour contracts, an end to fire and rehire, and better sick pay for all workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>With any reform of the law, the details are of critical importance. Rapid change has been promised in relation to trade union rights.&nbsp;&nbsp;However, for reforms to individual rights, the promise is only for an employment rights bill to be introduced within the first 100 days.&nbsp;&nbsp;This does not mean that actual change will happen that quickly \u2013 particularly if detail is left to implementing regulations, as is the case with current government reforms such as&nbsp;extending redundancy protection for pregnancy and maternity returners, and the new right to&nbsp;neonatal leave and pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Prior to the speech, some&nbsp;media reports&nbsp;had covered potential diluting of some key pledges on worker rights.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Labour Party\u2019s policy forum had agreed in July to consult on the proposal to create a single \u201cworker\u201d status, and they caveated their plan for \u201cday one\u201d rights (including unfair dismissal) by saying this would not prevent \u201cprobationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes\u201d.&nbsp;&nbsp;These detailed issues were not covered in the recent speech, so it remains to be seen whether some of the proposals will be quite as radical as they first appeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless, if implemented, Labour\u2019s package of proposed reforms would represent the most transformational change to UK employment law in decades.&nbsp;&nbsp;Employers should start considering the potential implications for their operations well in advance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have any specific questions you would like advice on, then please contact:&nbsp;<a href=\"mailto:Abi.Frederick@lewissilkin.com\">Abi.Frederick@lewissilkin.com<\/a>&nbsp;(Lewis Silkin LLP) or <a href=\"mailto:koichiro_nakada@btinternet.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">koichiro_nakada@btinternet.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Labour\u2019s plans for radical reform of emp&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3361,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[112,1846,1855,144,1848,203,1849,309,1850,392,1851,1681,1852,1843,1853,57,1844,1854],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/201901-jikenbo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2236"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2258,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions\/2258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.centrepeople.com\/jp\/article\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}