It is common knowledge that with the new Labour government, there will be lots of changes. One of the key areas that will be affected is employment law, especially surrounding employee rights. Labour is proposing to promote employee rights and hold the employer more responsible for the workplace environment. In this article, we discuss some of the changes that are being proposed.
Day one rights
One of the main proposals which will have a dramatic effect is introducing day one rights to bring unfair dismissal claims. Currently an individual has to be employed for two years before bringing a claim of unfair dismissal against their employer under the Employment Rights Act 1996. Allowing all employees to be eligible to bring unfair dismissal claims from day one of their employment, provides greater protection for employees. However it is highly likely to create concern for employers when recruiting. It has been suggested that employers may introduce longer, formal probationary periods to combat this monumental change and in the long run it is likely that the amount of claims being brought in the Employment Tribunal will increase, perhaps considerably.
Employment Status Reform and Zero Hours Contracts
There are also proposals to reform employment status in respect of combining the meaning of an ‘employee’ and ‘worker’ to give them the same employment rights as one another. Currently, there are three forms of employment status, employee, worker and self-employment, all of which have differing employment rights. This would be a significant change within employment law, especially combined with the day one rights to bring an unfair dismissal claim. Whilst there are benefits of simplifying employment status, it is not currently clear how what would happen to existing employee rights or how people would be taxed. Alongside this, Labour is looking to ban zero hour contracts, ensuring that workers are clear on the hours they work and that their contracts should reflect this. The idea of this to ensure that workers are not being exploited and have regular, guaranteed hours that they are expected to work.
Extension of time limits
Another change that has been proposed in relation to Employment Tribunal claims is the time limit to bring a claim. Currently, there is (with just a handful of exceptions such as statutory redundancy pay and equal pay claims) a time limit of 3 month minus a day from the last ‘act’ to bring a claim in the Employment Tribunal (usually the termination date or the last act of discrimination). Labour have proposed an extension of this time limit to 6 months for all claims. Not only does this provide greater scope for employees to bring their claims against their employers, this is also likely to contribute further to the expected increase in Employment Tribunal claims faced by employers.
If you need advice or support with respect to the proposed changes, please do get in contact with our Employment Team on 01206 239761 or lloyd.clarke@attwells.com for a free telephone consultation.
Our blogs and articles are correct at the time of writing.
These have been created for marketing purposes only and should not be considered as legal advice.
