The passage of the Employment Rights Act provides a long overdue upgrade to workers’ rights. It will have meaningful consequences for communities like Clapham & Brixton Hill, where too many people face insecure work, stagnant pay, and unfair treatment at the hands of exploitative employers. After decades of sliding backwards on workers’ rights, this act represents a decisive change of direction. 

It marks a decisive break from the previous Conservative government’s harmful policies, which led to declining employment standards and stagnant wages. On their watch, we saw mass fire and rehire actions, the growth of exploitative zero hours contracts and huge real terms pay cuts for workers in our public services. What do we have to show for this? Stagnant economic growth, stalling living standards and a lost decade of pay growth. In the 2010s, British workers saw their real pay fall—the first decade to see this happen since before World War Two. 

Austerity does not lead to sustained growth or benefit a majority of the population. We need to build an economy that recognises that ordinary workers are our single most important asset as a country and invests in them accordingly. This legislation is not perfect but it takes us closer to realising this goal.

What’s in the Employment Rights Act? 

At its core, the Employment Rights Act modernises the UK’s employment framework, tipping the balance of power back towards working people. Whilst the government rowed back on some earlier commitments, this legislation still introduces several basic rights from day one. It also strengthens protections against unfair dismissal, clamps down on abusive “fire and rehire” tactics and exploitative zero hours contracts. Under current proposals, the legislation will be implemented over the course of the next three years with several consultations on key provisions. 

Some of the key changes include: 

➡️ The repeal of anti-trade union laws (immediately) 

➡️ Day one rights to sick pay for all workers (April 2026) 

➡️ The creation of a Fair Work Agency (April 2026) 

➡️ Stronger protection against unfair dismissal and fire and rehire (2026) 

➡️ Stronger protections for pregnant women, whistleblowers and victims of sexual harassment (2026-2027) 

➡️ New right to bereavement leave (2027) 

➡️ A ban on exploitative zero hours contracts (2027)

We need A Second Employment Rights Act 

During the latter stages of the Employment Rights Bill, I expressed my concern about the government’s decision to row back on day one protection from unfair dismissal. A lot of the discourse around this change seemed to confuse this proposed change with abolishing probation periods altogether. To be clear, protection from unfair dismissal from day one is not the same as abolishing probation periods. Not passing probation is not a form of unfair dismissal. Unfair dismissal is unfair dismissal, whenever it happens and the failure to enshrine this in legislation leaves unscrupulous employers free to exploit this loophole.

The Employment Rights Act is a good start. It must be enacted as swiftly as possible to ensure workers feel the impact of these changes. But as I wrote for Politics Home, earlier this year, there is also much more to be done. Several further changes that the government needs to look at are the restoration of sectoral collective bargaining, a single universal “worker status” and delivering on our manifesto commitments to insource public sector contracts. These changes would go some way to addressing the precarity, wage attrition and exploitation which are too rife in the UK labour market.