4 November 2024

EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS CONSULTATIONS – YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO HELP SHAPE THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT IN OUR INDUSTRY

The Government has published consultations on its programme of employment rights reform, intended to inform the Employment Rights Bill currently going through Parliament.   

The reforms signal a step change for workers’ rights in the UK, but they’ll also have impacts on print businesses large and small. 

The BPIF’s Professional Services Team, and Public Affairs Adviser, are gearing up to submit feedback to the consultations – an essential step in shaping how these reforms play out in practice. We’re also teaming up with other trade associations, including the CBI, to amplify our message.

Consultations announced so far are:

• Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) – the removal of the three-day Waiting Period to claim SSP and the lower earnings limit. This will make SSP statutory available for all workers on day one of illness. 

• Trade union reform – the removal of ‘unnecessary restrictions’ on trade union activity. This will simplify the amount of information unions are required to provide in industrial action notices, increase protection for unions reps and members, make statutory recognition easier, allow unions to visit sites and alter the rules on strike action. 

• Zero hours contracts for agency workers – agency workers will have a right to request a contract reflecting the number of hours they regularly work, banning ‘one-sided flexibility’. Fair notice of shift changes and compensation for shift cancellations or loss of work will be required. 

• Collective redundancy/fire and re-hire – on collective redundancy, the Government is considering increasing the protective award that a tribunal can award from 90 to 180 days, or removing the cap on the protective award entirely. For fire and re-hire practices, it is seeking views on whether interim relief should be available to employees who are bringing an unfair dismissal claim.

If you have views on any of these areas, we need to hear from you!

There are two key ways you can get back to us:

1) Complete our online survey, which will give us quantitative data to feed back to Government. 

2) Contact the Professional Services Team or Public Affairs Adviser (contact details below) to provide qualitative feedback. All opinions can be anonymised.  

All consultations close at the start of December, so please feed back to us by Friday 22 November. 

For more detail on the proposed changes, and actions you may need to take, check out our ‘At A Glance’ Guide. 

Contact

Carys Davis, Public Affairs Adviser at [email protected] or please email to set up a call. 

Mandy Robson, Head of Professional Services at [email protected] or on 07957 564979.

Jo Haigh or Stacey Bromley, HR Business Partners on 020 7858 1215 or 020 3031 2683.