A Second Employment Rights Bill

There is a growing demand from the trade union movement for a second Employment Rights Bill. Many trade union leaders have pointed out that the Employment Rights Act 2025 (which passed in December) has left out a lot that should have been included. This requires a second Employment Rights Bill.

The Labour Party had set out an outline of what the 2025 legislation would incorporate in a Green Paper called A New Deal for Working People in 2021. Endorsed by Conference that year it was widely proclaimed thereafter by Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner as the blueprint for the legislation to be introduced if Labour won the next election. Just before the election, Labour’s Plan to make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People was published, emphasising that the New Deal ‘is our plan to make work pay.’

At the election on 4 July 2024 Labour won with a majority of 174 over all other parties combined. This should have ensured that every commitment in the New Deal would be translated into legislation. But somehow the promises got watered down. We may never know why or by whom but, whatever the reasons, we now need to put back what was taken out.

Four things stand out.

First of all, the Act does not, as the New Deal promised, create a single legal status of ‘worker’ (i.e. everyone who works for someone else and is not genuinely in business on their own account will be entitled to all statutory employment rights). The government has said it will consult over this but no dates have yet emerged. Having missed the 2025 Act, single status will require a second employment rights Act.

The need is urgent because the absence of single status in the 2025 Act is an incentive to employers to try to sidestep rights under the Act by seeking to change the legal status of the people it hires. So, for example, a person whose status is changed from being an ‘employee’ to being ‘self-employed’ will lose the right not to be unfairly dismissed. What the lawyers call ‘limb (b) workers’ have less rights than employees and those who are neither (e.g. Deliveroo riders) have virtually none.

Secondly, the Act does not, as the New Deal promised, reintroduce multi-employer collective bargaining to set negotiated minimum terms and conditions across an entire sector of the economy or a particular trade (as in the past). Indeed, the government rejected an amendment to enable it to introduce sectoral collective bargaining in any appropriate sector. True, the Act establishes Negotiating Bodies for Adult Social Care and School Support Staff, but it states that these do not constitute collective bargaining. Nor do they comply with the requirements of international law because of the government’s power to dictate what they discuss, who sits on them, and, ultimately to overrule them.

Thirdly, the Act makes some useful changes to industrial action law. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2013 and much of the Trade Union Act 2016 have been repealed. Strike notice has been shortened, ballot and strike notices have been simplified, the 50% ballot participation threshold has gone, while protection against dismissal and detriment for striking officially has been strengthened.  Moreover, electronic balloting may be introduced and, if so, the 40% voting threshold will be removed in the six sectors where it is currently required.

But all this goes nowhere near reversing the restrictions on industrial action piled on by the Tory legislation 1980-1993. The New Deal insisted that ‘the laws regulating industrial action should ensure that UK law complies in every respect with the international obligations ratified by the UK’. For over 35 years international bodies have held that our industrial action laws are in breach of those obligations. The 2025 Act redresses a few breaches.  Importantly (for example), the bar on all forms of solidarity action and the requirement that unions notify employers, in detail, that they intend to ballot for industrial action, have been repeatedly condemned as incompatible with the UK’s international obligations.

Finally, instead of collective negotiation, the Act relies on individual workers taking their complaints to employment tribunals. There the worker (unless represented by a union – and unions have very limited resources) will often feel uncomfortable and outgunned. Tribunals currently have 65,000 open cases with up to three years waiting times for a hearing. At hearing, employers win more cases than workers do, and research shows that, for those who do win, one third of compensation awards are never paid.

The ERA 2025 can be only the start of what needs to be a steady process of change. As suggested above, the priorities for the next step are a single legal status, the introduction of sectoral collective bargaining, removing Tory restrictions on the right to strike, and reducing the reliance on costly and ineffective litigation for the resolution of workplace disputes.

This article was first published in the Durham Miners’ Gala 2026 programme. Please become a ‘Marra’ and support the Durham Miners’ Gala going forward: https://friendsofdurhamminersgala.org/join_us