Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that a general election will be held on Thursday 4 July 2024.

Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have now released their manifesto promises relating to employment and workplace rights. So what does this mean for workplace reforms?

Labour

• Day-one rights: Remove any 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, e.g. sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave, protection against unfair dismissal, etc.

• Strengthen rights: Strengthen existing rights and protections, including for pregnant workers, whistle-blowers, workers made redundant, workers subject to TUPE processes and those making grievances; reinstate School Support Staff Negotiating Body; 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 them to take 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; ban certain unpaid internships; create Fair Pay Agreements in adult social care; 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: Making 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; 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, assess whether existing regulations and guidance is 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: 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; 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; 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 NMW + £2 per hour; remove apprentice rate; increase NMW for zero-hour 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; 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; introduce paid neonatal care leave and paid carer’s leave.​​​​​​

• Zero-hour 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; 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; exempt NHS and care staff from the £1,000 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.

What ever happens on the political front, it looks like workplace reform is going to continue to be a busy place! We will keep you updated as things progress and in the meantime if you have any questions, please of course get in contact.