The Employment Rights Act 2025, passed on 18th December last year, is hailed as the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights for a generation – but the Act has left out a lot that should have been included in it. That is why there is a growing demand from the trade union movement for a second Employment Rights Bill.
Many of the promises made in the Green Paper New Deal for Working People, Labour Party policy since 2021, have been diluted in all likelihood a consequence of the Labour Together scandal that saw the influence of business increase many times over that of organised labour, oft times bought with money of dubious provenance.
The movement is calling for a second Bill to at least address, as a priority, four key areas of labour law. There are more topics that will also need attention.
Firstly, we need to new legislation to create a single status of worker. This is a glaring example of the new forms of labour abuse where a person whose status is changed from being an ‘employee’ to some other status (eg Deliveroo riders) loses most, if not all, of their labour rights.
Secondly, the Act does not, as the New Deal promised, include a means of reintroducing sectoral collective bargaining. Indeed, the government rejected an Amendment which would have provided a mechanism to introduce sectoral collective bargaining in any sector where and when they felt it appropriate.
Thirdly, the Act makes some useful changes to industrial action law but has not reinstated a right to strike. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and much of the Trade Union Act 2016 have been repealed. But all this goes nowhere near reversing the restrictions on industrial action piled on by the Thatcher/Major legislation between 1980 and 1993.
Our labour code should and must comply with international legal standards. For example, the complete bar on all forms of solidarity action and the requirement that unions notify employers, in detail, that they intend to hold a ballot for industrial action have been repeatedly condemned as incompatible with the UK’s international obligations.
Finally, the Act substitutes collective negotiation by individual litigation. The Act depends on individual workers taking their complaints to the Employment Tribunal rather than by collective resolution conducted by union representatives.
Actions that can be taken to further the campaign for a second Bill include:
- sign our statement of support for a second Bill
- pass our model motion in your union and trades union council
- download, print and display our campaign material in your workplace
In the words of George Loveless, one of the Tolpuddle Martyrs “we raise the watchword liberty – we will, we will, we will be free.”