UK: Text of Employment Bill due out today

The UK’s Employment Rights Bill is due to be published later today, (Thurs Oct 10). According to press leaks it will offer employees a new range of rights covering probation periods, maternity pay, sick pay, zero-hour contracts, and enhanced rights to flexible working

What’s not in the Bill: Those same reports say the Employment Bill will not contain any references to enhanced collective or trade union right. The Labour government had indicated that it was prepared to trial sectoral bargaining in the social care sector, but as with other changes to collective rights, this has been put off for now.

The big picture: All the rights mentioned are new rights for individual employees. UK unions have been pushing for greater access to workplaces and streamlined union recognition procedures, with lower thresholds to trigger the recognition process and to secure recognition. Unions would also like to see a return to sectoral bargaining, which was once the predominant method of determining pay and working conditions across the country. 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Tom Hayes has recently written about how UK workers are missing out on new EU worker rights because of Brexit.