Labour\u2019s employment rights bill will finally become law after a battle in the House of Lords, paving the way for significant new rights for workers on sick pay, parental leave and zero-hours contracts.<\/p>\n
Trade unions hailed a \u201cgenerational shift\u201d for workers\u2019 rights after Tory peers conceded at the 11th hour on the legislation, which the government had promised to pass by Christmas. Royal assent is expected by Thursday.<\/p>\n
The struggle to pass the law, which faced significant opposition from the Conservatives and business groups, meant the government made a number of concessions to secure its passage.<\/p>\n
Trade unions agreed earlier this month to remove day-one rights to unfair dismissal from the package of reforms, in return for the lifting of the compensation cap, to get the bill through parliament in time to start implementing new rights from April.<\/p>\n
Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said: \u201cThis landmark legislation, now soon to be in law, will drag Britain\u2019s outdated employment laws into the 21st century and offer dignity and respect to millions more in the workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bill will introduce rights to guaranteed hours and payment for short-notice cancellation of shifts, bar fire-and-rehire practices in most circumstances, grant paternity and parental leave from day one, and strengthen workplace trade union rights.<\/p>\n
The day-one right to protection against unfair dismissal has been removed as a concession to business and replaced with a shortened qualifying period of six months, down from two years.<\/p>\n
The process of passing the bill \u2013 which contains key manifesto pledges \u2013 has renewed anger among a significant number of MPs and ministers towards the House of Lords, after repeated obstructions from Conservative and crossbench peers.<\/p>\n
The TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, said: \u201cThis is a historic day and early Christmas present for working people across the country, and the trade unions who represent them.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnions and workers have long campaigned for these vital rights. Together, we have broken a decades-long economic status quo defined by insecurity, weak rights and poor pay. Finally, working people will enjoy more security, better pay and dignity at work thanks to this bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s now vital that workers start feeling the benefits of this legislation in their lives as soon as possible. That means the legislation must be implemented in full, and at speed \u2013 with watertight secondary legislation to ensure there are no loopholes for bad bosses to exploit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said women, disabled people, ethnic minorities and young people stood to gain most from changes to unfair dismissal, zero-hours contracts and day-one rights.<\/p>\n
He said there were still obstacles ahead as the government devised codes of practice and secondary legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s vital that as government works with employers and unions to shape these, the reforms deliver on the spirit of the bill as originally intended,\u201d Harrison added.<\/p>\n
The Conservatives said the bill would fuel already rising unemployment. Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said: \u201cIt will pile costs on to small businesses, freeze hiring, and ultimately leave young people and jobseekers paying the price for Labour\u2019s capitulation to their union paymasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Conservatives will scrap the most disastrous elements of this bill and get Britain working again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour\u2019s employment rights bill will finally become law after a battle in the House of Lords, paving the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-319983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}