HR and Employment Law FAQs June 2024

We now know that the next UK general election will take place on 4 July 2024. On 24 May, the Labour Party published "Labour's Plan to Make Work Pay - Delivering a New Deal for Working People" setting out further details of the various changes it plans to make to employment law if it enters government. Many of the proposals in this new deal reflect those outlined in Labour's earlier "New Deal for Working People" (see our e-alert here), including plans to extend protection from unfair dismissal, broaden entitlement to statutory sick pay and strengthen collective bargaining rights. The 24-page new deal reasserts Labour's intention to introduce some employment legislation within 100 days of entering office, while recognising that public consultation will be necessary in relation to some of its plans (for example, the proposal to move to a single employment status of "worker"). The new deal also adds timeframes to certain aspects of Labour's proposals - for example, clarifying that all three-month limitation periods for claims in the employment tribunals would be extended to six-months, and that Labour would undertake a review of parental leave "within the first year" of taking office.

A key focus of the new deal remains on ensuring that workers are paid a "genuine living wage". To achieve this, the new deal states that Labour would change the remit of the Low Pay Commission (so that the national minimum wage would also take into account the cost of living) and Labour would remove what it refers to as the "discriminatory age bands" which currently apply in relation to the national minimum wage.
The new deal also includes a new proposal: to change the rules which currently apply in relation to the triggering of collective redundancy consultation obligations, so that an organisation will be required to consult if it proposes 20 or more redundancies within a 90-day period across its business, even if they will be split over multiple sites (effectively reversing the Woolworths case).

Notably, however, Labour's earlier plan to remove the statutory cap which currently applies in relation to unfair dismissal compensation awards is not referenced in the new deal. The wording in the new deal relating to the business practice of "fire and rehire" talks about "strengthening" the code of practice, rather than introducing an outright ban.

Other worker friendly protections referred to in the new deal (some of which were referenced in the earlier version) include the "right to switch off", new requirements for employers with over 250 employees to produce "Menopause Action Plans" (much like gender pay gap action plans) and report on their ethnicity and disability pay gaps, plans to facilitate employees making collective grievances, bereavement leave for all workers and plans to encourage employers to sign up to the "Dying to Work Charter" to support terminally ill employees. Interestingly, the new deal's outline of Labour's flexible working plans refers to enabling working "hours that better accommodate school terms…to ensure flexibility is a genuine default". The new deal also states that Labour would strengthen protection for whistleblowers (including by updating protection for women who report sexual harassment at work) and "strengthen the legal duty for employers to take all reasonable steps to stop sexual harassment before it starts".

Our policy team is continuing to liaise with the Labour Party to better understand the proposals and we will provide our Make UK subscribers with more detailed commentary on the various plans of the main political parties in due course.

In the meantime, if you are a Make UK subscriber, you can speak with your regular adviser about any general HR and legal issues you may have and/or access further information in our HRL Resources. If you are not a Make UK subscriber, you can contact us for further support on this topic or to access our resources please click here for information on how we can help your business.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.