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Employment Rights Act Amendment

This is a comprehensive bill which, once implemented, will represent the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation.

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Please Note​

These changes will more than likely be implemented in April 2025. 

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All information presented below is via the UK government | Further Reading​​ and any mention of "we" refers to the government, not Aviva or Unite the Union.​​

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Stuart Thomas | 30th October 2024

What does the bill do?

​This is a comprehensive bill which, once implemented, will represent the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation. It will raise the minimum floor of employment rights, giving the British public the prosperity, security and dignity that everyone in Britain needs and deserves at work.


The bill will support the government’s mission to increase productivity and create the right conditions for long-term sustainable, inclusive, and secure economic growth. It will help raise living standards across the country and provide better support for those businesses who are engaged in
good practices.

Address one-sided flexibility ensuring that jobs provide a baseline of security for workers

Ban exploitative zero hours contracts by introducing rights to guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts, and compensation for short-notice cancellation of shifts.
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End unscrupulous ‘fire and rehire’ and ‘fire and replace’ practices by considering any dismissals for failing to agree to a change in contract as automatically unfair, except where businesses genuinely have no alternative.
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Provide a day one right to protection from unfair dismissal (while allowing statutory probation periods in which a lighter-touch dismissal process applies).
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Strengthen collective redundancy rights by ensuring the employer obligations to consult on and notify 20 or more redundancies applies across a workforce, not just at a single establishment.
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Close the maritime redundancy notification loophole, ensuring that operators providing regular services from the UK cannot avoid the collective redundancy notification requirement.
The bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 10 October 2024. As is typical for employment legislation, further detail on many policies in the bill will be provided through regulations after Royal Assent.
 
We expect to begin consulting on the majority of these reforms in 2025, seeking significant input from all stakeholders. For some areas, we will be consulting before the end of the year, including on applying the zero hours measures to agency workers; modernising trade union legislation; and Statutory Sick Pay.
 
We will ensure business have time to prepare for the implementation of these reforms and expect that most reforms in the bill will take effect no earlier than 2026. Where more time is needed for businesses to prepare for change, this will be taken into consideration. We will also publish guidance where this is appropriate.

How
are
they
going
to do
it?

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