The Institute of Employment Rights on Labour’s employment rights reforms

Yesterday’s presentation of the Employment Rights Bill in Parliament is a significant moment. It comes after Labour promised to introduce legislation in the first 100 days of a new government.

The legislation has its roots in the work that the Institute has done since its inception, but particularly since the publication of A Manifesto for Labour Law in 2016, which laid a foundation for the Labour Party’s manifesto commitments in 2017 and 2019. This then developed into a New Deal for Working People, published in 2021, renamed ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay’ in the run up to the 2024 General Election.

IER experts have written extensively about the New Deal for Working People / ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay’ over a number of months. The following blogs will undoubtedly be of interest:

1.Labour’s plan to make work pay:

Professor Keith Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC examine the new deal for workers outlined in the King’s Speech and what should follow it.

Read it here.

2. A new ‘single status of worker’ definition must be an essential part of Labour’s plan:

Read it here.

3. The Long Slow Death of Labour’s Plans for Sectoral Collective Bargaining?

Read it here.

4. Tracing the path to a New Deal for Working People:

Read it here.

5. Industrial Action And Labour’s New Deal:

Read it here.

6. A briefing note on the confusion about Day One Rights and Probationary Periods:

Read it here.

7. Trade-union recognition, the Amazon case, and a New Deal:

Read it here.

8. The New Deal for Workers – a focus on ‘rights’ but what about power?

Labour’s long-awaited Employment Rights Bill does not do nearly enough to remove the restraints on trade unions or to give them the powers they need, argue Prof Keithe Ewing and Lord John Hendy KC.

Read it here.