LABOUR'S FIRST KING'S SPEECH
'Greatest change to employment law in more than a generation'
The greatest change in a generation is how Casper Glyn KC described the proposed legislation set out by the Labour Government in their first King’s Speech.
Whilst all the changes announced were included in Labour’s Make Work Pay report from their manifesto, the raft of changes proposed has still been headline grabbing.
As ever, we await the detail of the proposed bills, which Labour have suggested will be released within their first 100 days of Government, but the main changes expected include:
banning zero hours contracts and "fire and rehire";
making parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal a ‘day one’ right (subject to probationary periods);
changing statutory sick pay to make it accessible for more employees;
making flexible working default from day one
making it unlawful to dismiss a woman for 6 months after returning from maternity (with some exceptions);
establishing the Fair Work Agency (single enforcement body for employment rights); and
repealing trade union legislation, and making it easier to gain recognition
There are also changes to wider areas of employment which will likely impact HR teams, including:
introducing mandatory reporting on pay gap (like the equal pay reports) for disability and ethnicity; and
changing pension investments to provide automatic combining of pensions.
What is also interesting is what is not in the speech. Notably, the high profile but thorny issue of creating a single “employed” status has not been included, but was in the Make Work Pay proposals pre-election. Of course, the King’s Speech only lays out the plans for their first year, and with enough to keep us all busy, it may be they are saving the status question for later in the Parliament.