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Know your rights: Government publishes Employment Rights Bill
As part of the government’s Plan to Make Work Pay, the Department for Business and Trade published the Employment Rights Bill on 10 October.
The Bill seeks to ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, end "fire and rehire" and introduce basic employment rights from day one. It is largely a ‘Framework Bill’ with a series of consultations on the finer details to take place over the next year, so that most of the proposed reforms come into effect in 2026.
A Fair Work Agency will also be established to enforce existing rights as well as those introduced by the new legislation. See two government press releases about it here and here.
The government has also published a policy document that sets out a high-level timeline for implementation, and the direction of travel in several key areas.
Following advocacy from the business community, the policy document says that “workers on zero hours contracts and workers with a ‘low’ number of guaranteed hours, who regularly work more than these hours, [will have] the ability to move to guaranteed hours contracts which reflect the hours they regularly work over a 12-week reference period.”
This is as opposed to the 12-week reference period applying to people already contacted for a substantial number of hours who may, in addition to these, pick up overtime. While it does not reference seasonal work, the Department has said that, through consultation, it does want to protect both that and fixed-term contracts.
As part of the Employment Rights Bill, the government also seeks to toughen collective dismissal laws for seafarers and establish seafarer wage protections in UK law.
Published On: 17/10/2024 15:00:00
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