As would be expected with legislation as groundbreaking as the Employment Rights Bill, its journey through Parliament has been a long one. The bill was introduced a year ago, in October 2024, since when MPs and Lords have debated and consulted and, recently, engaged in the back and forth of amendments known as ‘ping pong’, with the Conservatives trying their hardest to put a spanner in the works.
But it’s nearly there. Royal Assent is just around the corner.
For UNISON and its members, the past 12 months have not been wasted. Far from sitting on the sidelines, UNISON’s staff have been working around the clock – with senior government ministers and their civil servants – to improve on an already favourable set of proposals and win even better outcomes for the union’s members.
As many will know, the ERB contains a host of beneficial measures that UNISON has long campaigned for. These include an end to exploitative zero-hours contracts and unscrupulous fire and rehire practices, the introduction of parental leave from day one, improvements to facility time for trade union reps and the lifting of the many curbs on trade union activity imposed by the Tory government.
When Royal Assent is granted and The Employment Rights Act is in place, Activist will lay out every single new change to workers’ rights, individual and collective, as well as the timetable for implementation.
For now, here are 11 ways in which we’ve made this far-reaching legislation even better – through influencing a raft of government amendments that will:
1. Strengthen provisions in the bill that tackle exploitative zero-hours contracts, by extending protections to agency workers.
2. Create new opportunities to organise around zero-hours contracts, through offering employers the ‘opt-out’ of the new statutory provisions by participating in collective agreements.
This has been welcomed by employers and their advisers who fear the complexity of the statutory scheme in workplaces without the support offered by union recognition.
3. Place a duty on employers to keep adequate working time records and make it an offence, punishable with a fine, not to comply with this duty.
This is a reform for which UNISON has campaigned for, in order to protect workers from being exploited. Inadequate records prevent workers from being able to identify abuses and seek legal redress, particularly for holiday pay entitlement for part-time workers.
4. Confirm that workers in the social care sector will not lose important minimum wage rights when their terms are covered by the new Adult Social Care Negotiating Body.
5. Ensure that the terms set via the negotiating bodies for adult social care and school support staff are a minimum and do not replace or undermine better terms achieved through collective agreement with recognised unions.
6. Enable Scotland and Wales to set up respective social care negotiating bodies, extending the possibility to the devolved nations of the benefits for care workers of the proposed Adult Social Care Negotiating Body in England.
7. Guarantee that everyone receives sick pay from the first day they’re ill, including workers previously excluded because they earned too little.
The Covid-19 pandemic exposed how inadequate statutory sick pay is in the UK. This vital change will eliminate the need for low-paid workers to attend work when ill, with beneficial consequences for service users, colleagues and public health.
8. Strengthen protections for trade union members during statutory recognition ballots, and prevent a new recognition agreement with a non-independent union stopping a statutory recognition application by an independent union.
9. Increase the time period for which an industrial action ballot has effect from six months to 12 months.
10. Expand protection for workers who take industrial action.
This will be achieved, first, through closing the loophole in the law exposed by the case run by UNISON for its member Fiona Mercer, which led to the Supreme Court asserting that employers can no longer discipline their staff for taking part in legal strike action; and second, through removing restrictions on the right to unfair dismissal.
11. Extend the time limit to bring employment tribunal claims from three to six months.
Of these further gains, UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea says: “UNISON has worked long and hard to ensure the Employment Rights Bill will make a real difference to our members’ lives and the jobs they do. That’s meant pushing for amendments to strengthen its contents, based on what our members have been telling us about the issues affecting them.
“I’m so proud of the role the union has played in drafting and delivering legislation that will be a gamechanger for our members and will truly rebalance the power relationship in workplaces.”
