Employment Rights Bill is law, but more battles to come
Workers' Liberty
Workers' Liberty
Author: Gerry Bates
16 December, 2025
The Labour government's flagship Employment Rights Bill passed both houses of Parliament on 16 December, so will soon become law.
Not all done and dusted, though. As Nils Pratley writes in the Guardian:
"It would be a mistake to think royal assent will mark the moment when the lobbying ends and everybody, employers and unions alike, can concentrate on implementation. In fact, the reverse is true...
"Take the introduction of guaranteed hours contracts... It is not clear how a worker’s right to guaranteed hours, having worked those hours regularly during a reference period, would operate in practice.
"What is the threshold for a 'low hours worker'? Does it mean as few as eight hours a week or, say, as many as 30? How regular is 'regular work'? How long is the reference period?...
"The extraordinary feature of the bill is that many things have been deliberately left to be resolved in secondary legislation..."
Which could mean, diluted seriously by that "secondary legislation" (legislation which is simply presented by ministers to Parliament and which normally goes through without debate). Trade unions must be made vigilant and insistent. Some of the provisions of the Bill will come into effect early in 2026, but others not until October 2026 or early 2027,
The Lords finally backed down, after several weeks of refusing to accept the Commons version of the Bill, when the government coaxed the CBI and other bosses' organisations into an open appeal to the Lords to do so.
The CBI had been sweetened by "day one" rights on unfair dismissal being dropped from the Bill, to be replaced by a six-months delay before you can claim unfair dismissal rather than the current two years. That backdown was approved by the TUC, and indeed we understand that the government used the TUC as its intermediary to convince bosses' organisations that six months was acceptable.
Unions should be pressing for Labour to introduce an additional one-clause Bill for "day one" unfair dismissal rights, to be persevered with even if the Lords use their powers of delay to the one-year maximum.
The Bill includes licence for unions to use electronic (rather than postal) balloting and removal of the turnout thresholds for industrial-action ballots mandated by the Tory Trade Union Act 2016.
As far as we can see from employment-law websites, thresholds will go two months after "Royal Assent" for the Bill, so mid-February 2026. (So the March 2025 statement by the TUC that it wouldn't go until after electronic balloting came in was wrong?) In early December (later than expected) the government published "consultation" documents on electronic balloting. That was due to be implemented in April 2026, but some reports now say it could be late 2026.
The Labour government's flagship Employment Rights Bill passed both houses of Parliament on 16 December, so will soon become law.
Not all done and dusted, though. As Nils Pratley writes in the Guardian:
"It would be a mistake to think royal assent will mark the moment when the lobbying ends and everybody, employers and unions alike, can concentrate on implementation. In fact, the reverse is true...
"Take the introduction of guaranteed hours contracts... It is not clear how a worker’s right to guaranteed hours, having worked those hours regularly during a reference period, would operate in practice.
"What is the threshold for a 'low hours worker'? Does it mean as few as eight hours a week or, say, as many as 30? How regular is 'regular work'? How long is the reference period?...
"The extraordinary feature of the bill is that many things have been deliberately left to be resolved in secondary legislation..."
Which could mean, diluted seriously by that "secondary legislation" (legislation which is simply presented by ministers to Parliament and which normally goes through without debate). Trade unions must be made vigilant and insistent. Some of the provisions of the Bill will come into effect early in 2026, but others not until October 2026 or early 2027,
The Lords finally backed down, after several weeks of refusing to accept the Commons version of the Bill, when the government coaxed the CBI and other bosses' organisations into an open appeal to the Lords to do so.
The CBI had been sweetened by "day one" rights on unfair dismissal being dropped from the Bill, to be replaced by a six-months delay before you can claim unfair dismissal rather than the current two years. That backdown was approved by the TUC, and indeed we understand that the government used the TUC as its intermediary to convince bosses' organisations that six months was acceptable.
Unions should be pressing for Labour to introduce an additional one-clause Bill for "day one" unfair dismissal rights, to be persevered with even if the Lords use their powers of delay to the one-year maximum.
The Bill includes licence for unions to use electronic (rather than postal) balloting and removal of the turnout thresholds for industrial-action ballots mandated by the Tory Trade Union Act 2016.
As far as we can see from employment-law websites, thresholds will go two months after "Royal Assent" for the Bill, so mid-February 2026. (So the March 2025 statement by the TUC that it wouldn't go until after electronic balloting came in was wrong?) In early December (later than expected) the government published "consultation" documents on electronic balloting. That was due to be implemented in April 2026, but some reports now say it could be late 2026.
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