The UK Labour party recently released an "Employment Rights Green Paper" outlining their vision for strengthening workers' rights if elected. The paper proposes wide-ranging reforms aimed at improving pay, job security, inequality and more. Here are some of the key points that employees should know:

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Pay and In-Work Poverty

• Labour commits to eradicating in-work poverty by raising the minimum wage to at least £10 per hour. They want to ensure wages are high enough to provide workers a decent standard of living.
• They plan to reform the Low Pay Commission to more actively drive up wages over time.
• Labour wants to ban unpaid internships and ensure things like travel time and overnight "sleep" hours are paid.

Job Security

• A major proposal is to create a single status of "worker" to provide basic rights like sick pay and protection against unfair dismissal to all workers, not just employees. This aims to clamp down on bogus self-employment.
• They plan to give workers basic rights like unfair dismissal protection from "day one" on the job rather than after 2 years under current rules.
• Zero-hours contracts would be banned under Labour, as would contracts without guaranteed minimum hours. Workers on regular hours for 12 weeks would gain a regular contract.

Work-Life Balance

• Flexible working would become a day-one right for all workers to better accommodate personal life commitments.
• New "right to disconnect" laws would prevent employers contacting staff outside working hours.
• Labour wants to strengthen family-friendly leave policies like shared parental leave.

Empowering Unions

• Labour would roll back recent trade union regulations to facilitate collective bargaining through things like sector-wide "Fair Pay Agreements".
• They propose new rights like workplace ballots for union recognition to make it easier for workers to unionise.

The proposals would amount to large changes in employment laws impacting employees and employers across the UK. With political winds shifting, these ideas could soon move from proposals to actual binding employment legislation.  

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Let's Dive In 

The Status Quo Multi-Year Wait For Critical Rights

As the law stands, employees classified as “workers” or “employees” only progressively gain certain fundamental rights and protections the longer they remain with an employer. These probationary periods can last up to 24 months...

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The obvious risks here are that probationary employees experience unjust treatment yet swallow unjust outcomes to avoid jeopardising their livelihoods whilst still establishing themselves in a new job.  

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Labour’s solution is to decisively close this perilous period of vulnerability by making unfair dismissal protection, antenatal rights and similar worker safeguards apply immediately with no waiting necessary. Their manifesto pledges to scrap qualification periods for core workplace entitlements, making key protections unconditional from the very first shift a new staff member clocks on the job...

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In essence, UK employment law carves out a sizeable initial window where staff shouldering necessary duties for companies receive substantially less defensive safeguards than their longer-tenured colleagues. In our recent article, we extensively elaborated on how recent Government policies and decisions have ingrained the weakness of employment rights and imbalances of power in the workplace. This is harming our prosperity as individuals and as a nation, the UK’s 31 million workers deserve a new deal.

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Blanket Coverage for Millions Reliant on Early Job Security

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For these broad groups who often face income fluctuations, the assurance that baseline workplace protections equally apply from day one provides peace of mind that arbitrary misfortune inside early months on the job won’t suddenly cut off their primary earnings lifeline. 

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The counterargument here, however, is the day one protection promise holds deeper symbolic value reinforcing for workers, especially those in lower bargaining positions, that their rights and contributions matter regardless of tenure. 

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Banning Unpaid Internships and Ensuring Fair Compensation

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Labour has also pledged additional reforms to promote fair working conditions, including banning unpaid internships except when they are part of an education or training course. Labour will ensure travel time in sectors with multiple working sites is paid. Labour will take action on ‘sleep over’ hours in certain sectors, such as social care.

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A New Social Safety Net for All Workers 

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A Labour Government will replace Universal Credit with a social security system that allows low-income earners on benefits to keep more of their take-home pay, and which offers a safety net for all.  

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Labour will raise Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) and make it available all workers, including the self-employed and those on low wages currently cut out by the lower earnings limit for eligibility.

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Creating a Single Status of ‘Worker’ with Equal Rights

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Labour will ensure that this injustice is rectified by creating a single status of ‘worker’ for all but the genuinely self-employed. All workers, regardless of sector, wage, or contract type, will be afforded the same basic rights and protections. This includes rights to sick pay, holiday pay, parental leave, protection against unfair dismissal and many others.

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Day One Rights and Protections on the Job  

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Labour will also strengthen the protections afforded to all workers by ending the qualifying periods for basic rights. The current arbitrary system leaves workers waiting up to two years to access some basic rights, including protection against some types of unfair dismissal. Labour will end this arbitrary system and scrap qualifying time for basic rights, such as unfair dismissal, sick pay, and parental leave.

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Eliminating Exploitative Working Arrangements  

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Labour will end ‘one sided’ flexibility and ensure all jobs provide a baseline level of security and predictability. Labour will ban zero hours contracts and contracts without a minimum number of guaranteed hours. We will also ensure anyone working regular hours for twelve weeks or more will gain a right to a regular contract to reflect those hours normally worked. Labour will also ensure all workers get reasonable notice of any change in shifts or working time, with wages for any shifts cancelled without appropriate notice being paid to workers in full.

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Outlawing Fire and Rehire Tactics

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Labour opposes fire and rehire and a Labour Government will act to end it. The first is improving information and consultation procedures, to make employers consult and reach agreements about contractual changes with their workforce. The second is adapting unfair dismissal and redundancy legislation to prevent workers being dismissed for failing to agree a worse contract. The final area is to ensure that notice and ballot requirements on trade union activity do not inhibit defensive action to protect terms and conditions of employment in situations where fire and rehire tactics are being implemented.

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Introducing a ‘Right to Disconnect’ From Work  

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Labour will bring in the ‘right to switch off’, so working from home does not become homes turning into 24/7 offices. Workers will have a new right to disconnect from work outside of working hours and not be contacted by their employer outside of working hours. Labour will introduce new rights to protect workers from remote surveillance. Rights and protections must keep pace with the changing nature of work and technological advancements. At a minimum Labour will ensure that proposals to introduce surveillance technologies would be subject to consultation and agreement of trade unions or elected staff representatives where there is no trade union.

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Stronger Family-Friendly Employment Rights 

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Existing policies to support family life are weak and often not available to all workers. Labour is committed to extending statutory maternity and paternity leave, introducing the right to bereavement leave and strengthening protections for pregnant women by making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who is pregnant for six months after her return, except in specific circumstances. A Labour Government would also urgently review the failed shared Parental Leave system, with reforms to incentivise sharing of leave.  

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Robust Enforcement Bodies to Protect Workers

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Labour will establish and properly fund a single enforcement body (SEB) to enforce workers’ rights. The new body will be given extensive powers to inspect workplaces and bring prosecutions and civil proceedings on workers’ behalf relating to health and safety, minimum wage, worker exploitation and discriminatory practices. Labour will ensure that there are enough inspectors employed in the system via the SEB so that they can undertake unannounced inspections and follow up on anonymous reports.

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Empowering Trade Unions to Enforce Rights 

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Trade union health and safety reps play a vital role in keeping workers safe and have demonstrated this, no more so than through their work during the pandemic. Labour will explore how to utilise the knowledge and experience of trade unions to maintain healthy and safe workplaces everywhere.  Labour will allow workers to bring civil cases for breaches of statutory health and safety regulation and defend workers’ ability to recover legal representation costs from negligent employers...

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Elevating Mental Health and Neurodiversity 

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Labour will review the law on health and safety at work to revise outdated legislation and make it fit for now and the future. Labour will raise awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace and across wider society. Labour will review provision for stress, mental health, the impact of new technology and new materials, and the impact of emerging health and lifestyle issues such as long Covid.

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Protecting Workers with Care Responsibilities

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Labour will strengthen the rights of workers to respond to family emergencies with paid family and carers’ leave, the right to have flexible working, and greater ability for workers to enforce these rights.

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Eliminating Workplace Pay Gaps 

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Structural inequalities at work and in wider society contribute to large and stubborn gaps in pay between different workers. Labour will permit equal pay comparisons across employers where men and women carry out comparable work. Labour will enforce the requirement to report and eliminate pay gaps with employers required to devise and implement plans to eradicate these inequalities.  Labour will ensure outsourced workers are included in employers’ gender pay gap reporting and pay ratio reporting. The publication of ethnicity pay gaps will be made mandatory for firms with more than 250 staff, to mirror gender pay gap reporting, following years of inaction from the Government.

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Tackling Socio-Economic Workplace Discrimination  

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Labour will address socio-economic inequalities in the workplace by enacting the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act 2010. This will require the Government and public sector to deliver better outcomes for lower income people and to make narrowing and eliminating inequality a priority.