Employment Rights Bill - An Overview

There are a huge amount of updates and upgrades to employment rights within the Employment Rights Bill, currently making its way through parliament. There are also a plethora of explanatory documents, factsheets, impact assessments and more to explain what the Bill will include, not forgetting the army of articles written by employment law specialists. We are certainly not the latter, but this is the first of a series of articles explaining the various measures included within the Employment Rights Bill and how they may affect the finance teams (incorporating finance, tax, payroll and our HEPA procurement colleagues) within the higher education sector.

As this is the first article, we'll ease you in with just a general overview of all the key measures. The government segregate the measures within the following 6 categories:

Family Friendly Rights

• Paternity Leave/Pay - day 1 right and ability to be taken after shared parental leave/pay
• Unpaid parental leave – day 1 right
• Unpaid Bereavement Leave – new right
• Further protections from dismissal for pregnant women, mothers on maternity leave and mothers returning to work (for 6 months from return)
• Flexible working requests – day 1 right but employers have to provide evidence of reasonable grounds a request is denied

One sided-flexibility

• Zero hours contracts (including agency workers) – rights to guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts, payment for short-notice cancellation of shifts
• Fire and rehire, fire and replace – automatically unfair unless business can demonstrate there is genuinely no alternative
• Unfair dismissal – day 1 right
• Statutory probation periods
• Collective redundancy – consult and notify requirements where 20+ redundancies at one establishment, or an amount to be set in secondary legislation

Fairness, equality & wellbeing of workers

• Sexual harassment:
  • Employers must take ALL reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of employees (previously just reasonable steps)
  • Not allow third party harassment of employees
  • ‘Reasonable’ to be specified by regulations
  • Whistleblower protections
• Employers to produce action plans on how they are addressing gender pay gap, and supporting menopause employees

Workers get fair pay

• SSP – remove Lower Earnings Limit and waiting period
• School Support Staff Negotiating Body to be reinstated
• Fair Pay Agreements for adult social care sector
• Employers to consult with employees on tipping policies
• Outsourced contracts offered on same terms and conditions regardless of whether from private or public sector

Trade Unions

• Repeal various acts, but allow Trade Unions better right of access (including digital)
• Duty for employers to inform workers of their right to join
• Protections on grounds of industrial action

Enforcement

• Employment Tribunal Claims – time limit increased from 3 to 6 months
• Umbrella companies brought within Employment Agencies Act (regulation)
• Create Fair Work Agency with similar powers to HMRC (investigate, inspect and take action, including penalties) – responsible for NMW, holiday pay, gangmasters and labour exploitation. Can also bring cases to employment tribunal on behalf of workers

Our next article will look at the category, ‘one sided-flexibility’ in more detail, considering policy/process/system changes, but also the less discussed culture changes around the use of zero hours contracts in the sector.