On 17th July, the Government outlined its priorities for 2024/25 in the King’s Speech, including several key Employment Bills 2024/25 that could significantly impact the workplace. Among the various Employment Bills 2024/25 proposed, four stand out for their potential influence on employment law:
The Children’s Wellbeing Bill
Whilst this is not purely an employment Bill, part of it will have an impact. The Bill, if passed as law, would enable serious teacher misconduct to be investigated regardless of when the misconduct occurred, the setting the teacher is employed in and how the misconduct is uncovered.
The Digital Information and Smart Bill
This is another Bill that isn’t specific to employment. If it passes as law, then it would establish digital verification services to ensure the creation and adoption of secure and trusted digital identity produces and services from certified providers, that includes pre-employment checks. It would also modernise and strengthen the Information Commissioner Office by introducing a CEO, Board and Chair, and would bring new and stronger enforcement powers.
The Employment Bill
This Bill, if passed would bring significant changes to employment protections and working practices. Within the Bill, it sets out to:
- Ban exploitative zero-hour contracts by giving employees a right to have a contract reflecting the hours they regularly work based on a 12-week reference period
- Introduce a right to give workers reasonable notice of work schedules and wages for shifts cancelled at short notice
- Adapt and build on the recently implemented changes to flexible working rules to ensure flexibility is a genuine default from day one unless there are good reasons to refuse
- Make parental leave a day one right for all workers
- Entitlement to bereavement leave for all workers
- Strengthen protections for new mothers by making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby, for the period of six months after their return to work (with certain exceptions)
- Make changes to the Trade Union Act 2016 and abolish certain rules on industrial action
- All new starters to be informed of their right to join a Trade Union
- Reinstating the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, to establish national terms and conditions, career progression routes and fair pay rates
- Making the process of statutory recognition for trade unions simpler
- Creating a new right for workers (and union members) to access a union within workplaces
- Remove the lower earnings threshold for qualifying for Statutory Sick Pay and to remove the waiting days, making it available from day 1 for all workers
- Remove the National Minimum Wage age bandings so all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage
- Change the criteria for determining the National Minimum Wage to ensure the cost of living is a factor when setting the minimum pay level
- Create a ‘Fair Pay Agreement’ to allow for sectoral collective bargaining in the adult social care sector
- Place a new duty on large employers to produce ethnicity and disability pay gap reports
- Unfair dismissal to become a day 1 employment right for all workers (subject to rules around probation periods)
- Restrictions placed on the practice of fire and rehire (dismissal and reengagement)
- Create a single enforcement body to enforce employment rights, called the ‘Fair Work Agency’
The Equality (Race and Disability) Bill
This new Bill would legislate to place a new duty on large employers (employing more than 250 people) to produce ethnicity and disability pay gap reports. It would also enshrine in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and people with disabilities by making it easier to bring unequal pay claims.
With parliament in recess for the summer, we will not see the detail of these Bills, until it returns in September.
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