Briefing: The Employment Rights Bill (2024) – A big step forward, but bigger steps required

Our briefing analysing the worrying trapdoors in the government's Employment Rights Bill

An IER briefing that analyses the government’s Employment Rights Bill. It highlights issues that will inevitably effect workers through existing legal gaps and new trap doors in UK labour law:

The problem of status and the confusion between those who work on a subordinate basis for others, and those genuinely running a business on their own account;
The problem of low pay and growing inequality as a result of years of deregulation and de-unionisation;
The problem of insecure jobs affecting the capacity of people who work to have a decent standard of living;
The problem of lack of worker voice and lack of worker power, with only a minority of those who work protected by a recognised trade union;
The problem of lack of effective remedies, and – as revealed by the P&O Ferries Ltd case – the failure of our labour law to ensure that employers are required to comply with their legal obligations; and
The problem of British labour law’s incompatibility with international labour standards ratified by the United Kingdom.