A new Bill should focus on a single status of worker and sectoral collective bargaining, argues Jeff Slee.
The Employment Rights Act finally becomes law this week. It was held up throughout the autumn by the Lords, who kept insisting on amendments they wanted. In order to get the Bill through, the Government and trade union leaders made a big concession which means that workers will have protection against unfair dismissal only after six months, instead of from their first day of employment.
The only union leader who has been prepared to acknowledge their role in this climbdown is Mike Clancy, General Secretary of the Prospect union, in Labour List on 28th November.
The Act puts into law some – but by no means all – of the commitments agreed between the Party leadership and affiliated unions in “Labour’s New Deal for Working People” of May 2024 (hereinafter referred to as the New Deal).
The Act does give some improvements to workers’ and unions’ rights, but most of these won’t come in until next year or 2027. They are dependent on consultations to be held, and regulations and secondary legislation to be introduced, over the next two years.
The improvements are welcome, but further improvements to workers’ and trade union rights are needed to help protect workers from exploitation and to remove the shackles imposed on trade unions by decades of Tory anti-union laws. The campaign for a second Employments Rights Bill already has the support of some unions and MPs.
What’s in the Act?
The Act is largely unchanged from the Bill published in October 2024, which I reviewed here a year ago.
The Labour Research Department published a comprehensive explanation of the Bill in January 2025 (but to read it you have to buy or subscribe to LRD publications – or get your union branch to do so). The main improvements made during the passage of the Bill are provisions making it harder for bosses to frustrate and prevent unions getting recognition.
What comes next?
Although the Act is now law, few of its provisions apply straightaway: repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and of the great majority of the Trade Union Act 2016; simplifying industrial action notices and industrial action ballot notices; protection against dismissal for taking industrial action; and removing the 10-year ballot requirement for trade union political funds.
Most of the measures in the Act won’t come into force until next year or 2027. And how they will apply depends on the 26 consultations to be held, regulations to be issued, and secondary legislation to be brought in, as the Government explained in the timetable it published in July.
The government has already launched consultations on four areas, including trade unions’ right of access to workplaces and e-balloting.
The consultations that will start now the Act has passed, include :
- protection from unfair dismissal from Day One
- how the School Support Staff Negotiating Body and Fair Pay Agreement for the Adult Social Care sector will work
- trade union recognition
- new rights and protections for trade union representatives
- fire and rehire
- regulation of umbrella companies
- ending the “exploitative use of” Zero Hours Contracts
- blacklisting
- flexible working.
- The Fair Work Agency, which will be a new agency to enforce employment rights.
Trade Unions must keep lobbying and campaigning against any Government retreat from its New Deal commitments. Why? Because there is a danger that these consultations, and the regulations that will follow them, could see the Government retreating further from the aims of the Act under pressure from bosses’ organisations – especially as the ministers who took the Employment Rights Bill through the Commons all left in the Government reshuffle on the first weekend of September. Angela Rayner resigned; the Business Secretary Jonathon Reynolds was moved to Chief Whip, replaced by Peter Kyle – one of the Labour MPs closest to business bosses; and Justin Madders, Minister for Employment Rights who had done much of the work on the Bill, was sacked, replaced by Kate Dearden, the new MP for Halifax.
As Aletha Adu wrote in the Guardian on 6th Sept: “Allies of Rayner who remain in government believe a fight is looming over workers’ rights. With Rayner and Madders gone, they believe Kyle has the ability to water down the bill – a package they feel many from the centre of the party were never happy with.”
For s second Employment Rights Bill
Trade unions and others have said that the Act does not do enough, and does not put into law some of the key elements of the New Deal. September’s TUC Congress unanimously carried a motion which, while welcoming some aspects of the Bill, said that it gives “insufficient commitment to strengthening collective bargaining, which is vital to reversing the long-term decline in wages and conditions.”
It also “leaves dangerous loopholes around ‘fire and rehire’ practices and zero-hour contracts that employers will continue to exploit.”
Despite the Bill, the motion went on, “many anti-union laws continue to limit workers’ ability to organise, take action and win improvements through collective strength – especially the continued ban on solidarity action.”
The motion called on the TUC to “draft a comprehensive workers’ rights package including: – immediate repeal of all anti-union laws – a full ban on ‘fire and rehire’ and zero-hour contracts – a £15 per hour minimum wage with no age exemptions – a statutory right to collective bargaining for all workers.” (Composite motion CO4 ‘Strengthening-The-Employment-Rights-Bill’, moved by the POA, seconded by BFAWU)
A second Employment Rights Bil is needed. The campaign for this is supported by some unions and by John McDonnell, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, and other MPs.
In my view, the main focus of a campaign for a second Employment Rights Bill should be on a single status of worker, and sectoral collective bargaining. Both of these were promised by the Labour leadership in the New Deal, and during the passage of the Bill Ministers repeated their commitment to a single status of worker.
A single status of worker will mean that every worker except the genuinely self-employed have full employment rights. The millions of workers in the gig economy, on zero-hour contracts, working for agencies, or in bogus self-employment, do not at present have full employment rights, because they are not classed in law as employees. Their numbers are expected to grow as bosses use these forms of employment to get around employee rights in the Act, and to keep more control over hiring and firing and hours of work, to cut wage costs, to avoid employer National Insurance contributions, and to undercut their competitors. I wrote on this in an article here in June.
Sectoral collective bargaining is where bosses and unions across a sector of the economy meet together to set minimum standards which are binding on all companies in that sector. This prevents bad employers undercutting their competitors by paying lower wages, or giving worse conditions of employment, a practice which leads to a downward spiral in which all workers suffer. Sectoral collective bargaining was common in the UK until the 1980s. The Employment Rights Act will set up only two sector Negotiating Bodies – for school support staff and for adult care workers – and neither of these give full collective bargaining across their sector.
The case for a second Bill was made by the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom and the Institute of Employment Rights in a briefing for September’s TUC Congress.
CTUF and Strikemap say that a second Employment Rights Bill should include:
1. An Immediate repeal of all anti-union laws.
2. A full ban on ‘fire and rehire’, enforceable by injunction.
3. End all zero-hours contracts.
4. A £15 per hour minimum wage with no age exemptions.
5. A statutory right to collective bargaining for all workers and a legal mechanism for creating sector-wide collective bargaining.
6. Amending our labour laws to comply with international standards.
7. Universal employment rights, including for workers on working visas, through a single worker status.
8. All workers to be entitled to all employment rights from Day One.
9. A full trade union right to access workers on employers’ premises, enforceable by injunction.
10. End restrictions on industrial action and introduce a positive right to strike, including the right to take solidarity action.
Supporters of a second Bill should plan a campaign aimed at getting this introduced in Parliament, and getting support from trade unions.
Jeff Slee is a retired rail worker and former RMT National Executive Committee member.
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