General Election 2024: what could the July general election mean for employment law?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that a general election will be held on 4 July.

Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have now released their manifesto promises relating to employment and workplace rights. Here, we run through their positions on workplace reform.

Labour

•   Day-one rights: Remove qualifying periods for basic rights like unfair dismissal, sick pay, and parental leave so they become day-one rights.

•   Single status of “worker”: Remove current distinction between employees and workers so that all workers are afforded same basic rights and protections, eg sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave, protection against unfair dismissal, etc.

•  Strengthen rights: Strengthen existing rights and protections, including for pregnant workers, whistleblowers, workers made redundant, workers subject to TUPE processes and those making grievances; reinstate School Support Staff Negotiating Body; and encourage employers to sign up to “Dying to Work” charter to support workers with a terminal illness.

•   Self-employment: Be given a right to a written contract.

•   Raise wages for workers: Remove age bandings used in current system; reform role of the Low Pay Commission, including requiring it to take the cost of living into consideration when recommending rates; ensure travel time in sectors with multiple working sites is paid; act on “sleep over” hours in sectors like social care; create Fair Pay Agreements in adult social care; and ban unpaid internships except as part of education/training course.

•   Sick pay: Strengthen Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), make it available for all workers and remove the waiting period. Rate to represent fair earnings replacement.

•  Tips: Strengthen the law to ensure hospitality workers receive their tips in full and workers decide how tips are allocated.

•    Close pay gaps: Publication of ethnicity and disability pay gaps to be mandatory for firms with more than 250 staff.

•  Tackle harassment: Require employers to create and maintain workplaces and working conditions free from harassment, including by third parties.

•   Flexible working: Make flexible working the default from day one for all workers except where it is not reasonably feasible.

•   Family-friendly: Make parental leave a day-one right; introduce right to bereavement leave; make it unlawful to dismiss pregnant employees for six months after return from maternity leave except in specific circumstances.

•  Caring responsibilities: Review implementation of carer’s leave and examine benefits of introducing paid carer’s leave.

•   Zero-hours contracts: Ban “one-sided” flexibility; anyone working regular hours for 12 weeks or more will gain right to a regular contract to reflect hours worked; and all workers to get reasonable notice of any change in shifts or working time, and recompense for cancelled shifts.

•  Fire and re-hire: Improve information and consultation procedures by replacing statutory Code of Practice introduced by current Government with a stronger one; and adapt unfair dismissal and redundancy legislation to prevent workers being dismissed for not agreeing to a worse contract.

•  Wellbeing: Support wellbeing of workers and their long-term physical and mental health; and assess whether existing regulations and guidance are adequate to support and protect those experiencing the symptoms of Long Covid.

•   Menopause: Require large employers with more than 250 employees to produce Menopause Action Plans.

•  Right to switch off: Introduce a new right to disconnect and protect workers from remote surveillance.

•  Artificial intelligence (AI): Work with workers, trade unions, employers and experts to examine what AI and new technologies mean for work, jobs and skills.

•  Update trade union laws: Strengthen trade union right of entry to workplaces; simplify process of union recognition; strengthen protections for trade union reps; and new duty on employers to inform workforce of right to join a union in their written contract.

•  Enforcement rights: Extend time limit for bringing employment tribunal claims to six months; simplify enforcement of equal pay; and establish a single enforcement body to enforce worker rights.

Conservatives

•        Raise wages for workers: Increase National Living Wage to around £13 per hour by the end of the next Parliament and continue to reduce National Insurance.

•      Sickness absence: Overhaul fit note process so that people are not signed off sick by default, including a triage process for employees who are seeking a fit note and directing them down an appropriate pathway.

•   Equality: Make laws to clarify that the protected characteristic of “sex” means biological sex.

•    Update trade union laws: Re-instate stricter trade union laws removed in Wales.

•   Foreign workers: Introduce a legal cap on migration that will fall every year of Parliament, increase visa fees and require migrants to have health checks.

•   Apprenticeships: Create 100,000 more apprenticeships in England every year by the end of the next Parliament.

Liberal Democrats

•    Status: Establish a new “dependent contractor” employment status in between employment and self-employment; and put burden of proof on the employer in tribunals in cases on status.

•    Raise wages for workers: Introduce a care worker’s minimum wage of National Minimum Wage (NMW) + £2 per hour; remove apprentice rate; and increase NMW for zero-hours contracts to 20% higher at times of normal demand to compensate for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours of work.

•   Sick pay: Remove lower earnings limit and align rate with NMW; remove waiting days; and consult with small employers on government support for SSP costs.

•   Flexible working: Give everyone a right to flexible working and disabled workers the right to work from home if they want to unless there are significant business reasons where this is not possible.

•    Family-friendly: Day-one right to parental leave and pay for all, including self-employed and kinship carers; increase length of paternity leave; increase rate of pay during family leave; require employers to publish parental leave and pay policies; and introduce paid neonatal care leave and paid carer’s leave.

•   Zero-hours contracts: Introduce right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for zero-hours workers and agency workers, not to be unreasonably refused.

•   Equality: Add ‘”caring” and “care experience” to protected characteristics; introduce Adjustment Passports to record adjustments and equipment a disabled person needs; provide support and advice to employers on neurodiversity; extend public sector use of name-blind recruitment and encourage its use in the private sector; raise employers’ awareness of Access to Work Scheme; and requirement for large businesses to monitor and publish data on gender, ethnicity, disability and LGBT+ employment levels, pay gaps and progression, and publish five-year aspirational diversity targets.

•   Foreign workers: Replace salary threshold scheme with a merit-based system for work visas; and exempt NHS and care staff from the £1000 a year immigration skills charge.

•    Apprenticeships: Replace apprenticeship levy with a skills and training levy.

•     Worker protection: Establish a Worker Protection Enforcement Authority responsible for enforcing minimum wage, tackling modern slavery and protecting agency workers.