In October 2024, the Labour government published the Employment Rights Bill. The bill introduced a range of policy measures relevant to underemployment, including:
- ‘day 1 rights’ of employment, including entitlement to paternity leave, and unpaid parental leave as well as protection from unfair dismissal while allowing employers to operate probation periods. Establishing bereavement leave, and making flexible working the default
- addressing one-sided flexibility by banning exploitative zero-hours contracts, abolishing the scourge of fire and rehire and strengthening provisions on collective redundancy
- establishing a Fair Work Agency
- modernising Trade Union laws
- improving pay and conditions through a Fair Pay Agreement in adult social care
- increasing protection from sexual harassment, introducing gender and menopause action plans and strengthening rights for pregnant workers
- strengthening Statutory Sick Pay
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/next-steps-to-make-work-pay
The bill has been welcomed as an important step in overhauling employment rights, including by trade unions (e.g. TUC, USDAW) and professional bodies (e.g. CIPD). The benefits of the bill could be far reaching, with improvements for millions of working people in the UK.
The Work Foundation’s research has estimated that 6.8 million people in severely insecure work could benefit from the proposed changes, improving the working conditions for women, disabled workers, younger workers and workers from Black, mixed and Pakistani backgrounds who are more likely to be in insecure work.
The Women’s Budget Group calculated that 1.47 million women will have new rights to sick pay, and 555,000 women would ‘have job security due to banning of exploitative zero-hour contracts and focus on women-led sectors’.
The new bill could also have implications for underemployed workers, who are more likely to be on zero-hours contracts, and the focus on adult social care is an important step, given the high levels of underemployment in the sector (Torres et al. 2023).
Whilst this landmark legislation marks a significant change for workers’ rights, questions have been raised about the details and implementation of the proposals, such as how will guaranteed hours be determined (Resolution Foundation), and the exclusion of certain groups of agency and self-employed workers (Bogg and Ford, 2024) who would not benefit from the new employment rights.
We argue that the Labour government also should take the opportunity to address other systemic inequalities in the labour market through plans for wider reform. Our research has found that people face multiple barriers in accessing good quality work that reflects their skills, rewards them fairly, and provides them with suitable working hours. Some of these barriers include childcare provision, transport, health and well-being concerns, social security conditions, and limited employment support and training. Working with trade unions, employers and stakeholders will be essential to ensuring the Bill’s success in addressing labour market marginalisation and inequality.