By Professor Tony Dobbins
Professor of Work and Employment Relations, Birmingham Business School
The King’s Speech 2024 commits to legislating for an Employment Rights Bill, reflecting promises in Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay-New Deal For Working People.
The extensive policy proposals include: creating a single enforcement body (Fair Work Agency); a new Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector; delivering a genuine living wage; repealing anti-trade union laws, including the Trade Union Act 2016 and the Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Bill; simplify the process of union recognition and statutory recognition thresholds; introduce rights for unions to access workplaces for recruitment and organising purposes; introduce a new duty on employers to inform all new employees of their right to join a union; banning exploitative zero hour contracts; ending fire and rehire and fire and replace; move towards a single status of worker; day one rights for all workers; making flexible working the default from day-one for all workers; a right to ‘switch-off’; strengthen statutory sick pay; public procurement to support good work (Fair Work Standards).
It is promising that the proposals fall under many of the dimensions adopted by the Measuring Job Quality Working Group.
Deregulation, low productivity
Cumulatively, the range of new regulations will constitute a substantial increase in workers’ rights after 14 years of Conservative government espousal of a liberalized flexible labour market model. According to the CBR-LRI Index, the UK ‘flexible labour market’ model is lightly regulated, especially compared to many EU Member States. The index also states that deregulation of the kind the UK has experienced since the 1980s, which treats labour laws as a ‘burden on business’, is not the norm, and that worker-protective regulations have mostly positive impacts, including for productivity, innovation and employment, and fairer income distribution. This factual evidence goes against much orthodox commentary in the UK on the impact of worker protection regulations.
The UK’s low wage-low investment-low productivity model has created increasing quantities of low-quality insecure jobs. An estimated 6.8 million people (21.4%) were in severely insecure work in 2023, particularly in left-behind regions in the Midlands and Northern England. Access to good work across UK regions is very unevenly spread and widening, and this has been exacerbated by austerity and external shocks like the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, and the Coronavirus pandemic.
Beneficial constraints – good employment relations
A new policy direction and associated new regulations are required based on the concept of imposing ‘beneficial constraints’ on ‘low-road’ employers to compel them to create better quality jobs, and to support and protect good employment relations.
The Labour Government commitments on workers’ rights, along with greater devolved policy levers, can potentially help to underpin better, more productive, work in left-behind UK regions, especially outside London and South-East England.
Strong enough?
Nonetheless, there are concerns that the policy measures are not as far-reaching as an earlier iteration in an Employment Rights Green Paper and might be further diluted to appease business lobbyists. For instance, initial promises to establish Fair Pay Agreements across the economy are now confined to starting by consulting on a new Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector. More could be done to extend sectoral collective bargaining, especially in everyday foundational economy sectors.
Timeframes also matter. Although it is promised that an Employment Rights Bill will be introduced within the first 100 days of government, many of the proposals in the Bill could take considerably longer to be enacted (especially given promises to consult business and other stakeholders on measures such as moving towards a single status of worker).
Given that the depth of (collective) workers’ rights in the UK is now so shallow, if Labour compromises on/dilutes its proposals, it might be insufficient to narrow substantial power imbalances between workers and bosses in the UK employment relations model[1]. A big enough regulatory armoury of workers’ rights (beneficial constraints) would be required to compel ‘exploitative’ employers, in particular, to change their strategies and move the UK towards a trajectory of better jobs.
Moreover, there are policy possibilities for extending workers’ rights that are not included in the Bill. This could include: (re)establish a Ministry of Employment Rights akin to the former Ministry of Labour; introduce stronger employee representation rights to create works councils by reforming existing standard rules on information and consultation provisions in The Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004; Worker Directors on company boards; the expansion of worker ownership/cooperatives; roll-out of devolved regional job guarantee schemes underpinning good jobs and meaningful full employment, focused on everyday economy, green and community sectors/zones; contemplate moving closer to/eventually rejoining the EU and embracing the new European Pillar of Social Rights.
[1] The Labour manifesto and King’s Speech are also arguably too silent on income and wealth inequalities and redistribution.
- Find out more about Professor Tony Dobbins
- Back to Social Sciences Birmingham
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Birmingham.