The Labour Party manifesto 2024: Key employment law pledges

The Labour Party Manifesto 2024 has just been published ahead of the General Election on 4^th July 2024.

Labour pledges to introduce employment legislation to Parliament within the first 100 days of entering government (if it wins). It has committed to implementing its plan to ‘Make Work Pay’ (published in May 2024) in full.

 The following are the Manifesto headlines relevant to employment law

1. Unfair dismissal: Protection from unfair dismissal will be made a day one right (this is very significant as, currently, employees must have two years’ continuous service to be entitled to this protection).
    
2. Statutory Sick Pay: Statutory Sick Pay will be available from the first day of sickness.
    
3. Parental leave: Parental leave will be made a day one right.
    
4. Fire and rehire: End the practice of fire and rehire.
    
5. Pay gap reporting: Ethnicity pay gap reporting and disability pay gap reporting will be made mandatory for large organisations.
    
6. Zero hours contracts: Zero hours contracts will be banned.
    
7. Equal pay: Introduce new rights to equal pay for Black, Asian and minority ethnic and disabled people. Strengthen rights to equal pay for women.
    
8. Maternity and menopause discrimination: Strengthen protections from maternity and menopause discrimination.
    
9. Sexual harassment: Strengthen protections from sexual harassment.
    
10. Race Equality Act: Introduce a new Race Equality Act to enshrine in law the right to equal pay for Black, Asian and other ethnic minority people, strengthen protections against dual discrimination and race inequality.
     
11. Minimum wage: The minimum wage will be a genuine living wage. Age bands will be removed so that all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage.
     
12. Trade unions: Strengthen the collective voice of workers, including through their trade unions, and create a Single Enforcement Body to ensure employment rights are upheld.

The following pledges are not specifically stated in the Manifesto but are set out in the plan to ‘Make Work Pay’

1. Worker status: A full and detailed consultation will be carried out to consider plans to create a single status of worker.  Such a change, if implemented, would mean that the existing three employment statuses (employee, worker and self-employed) will be reduced to two (worker and self-employed).  
    
2. Carers’ and bereavement leave: The existing right to carers’ leave will be reviewed and, subject to that review, made paid leave (it is currently unpaid).  A new right to bereavement leave will also be introduced for all workers.
    
3. Time limits to bring claims before an Employment Tribunal: The time limit within which individuals are able to bring claims before an Employment Tribunal will increase from three to six months.
    
4. Internships: Unpaid internships will be banned, except when they are part of an education or training course.
    
5. Right to “switch-off”: Guidance will be issued encouraging employers to provide their staff with a right to “switch off” following the models in force in Belgium and Ireland. 
    
6. Worker surveillance: Proposals by employers to introduce surveillance technologies will be subject to consultation and negotiation with a view to agreement with trade unions or elected staff representatives where there is no trade union.
    
7. Collective consultation for redundancy: The law will be amended so that the right to collective consultation is determined by reference to the number of people impacted across the business as a whole, as opposed to at each individual establishment.
    
8. Trade unions: The process of union recognition and the law around statutory recognition thresholds will be simplified; electronic balloting and workplace ballots will be permitted; a new duty on employers will be introduced requiring them to inform all new employees of their right to join a union; new and enhanced protections will be put in place for trade union representatives; and backlisting laws will be updated.
    
9. Menopause: Large employers (with 250 or more employees) will be required to produce “Menopause Action Plans” setting out how they support employees through the menopause.

Employment law headlines from other main party manifestos published so far

Liberal Democrats Party 

• Encourage employers to promote employee ownership by giving staff in listed companies with more than 250 employees a right to request shares, to be held in trust for the benefit of employees.
   
• Establish a new “dependent contractor” employment status in between employment and self-employment, with entitlements to basic rights such as minimum earnings levels, sick pay and holiday entitlement. Also, shifting the burden of proof in employment tribunals regarding employment status from individual to employer.
   
• Set a 20% higher minimum wage for people on zero hour contracts at times of normal demand to compensate them for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours of work.
   
• Introduce a right to request (not to be unreasonably refused) a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for “zero hours” and agency workers.
   
• Expand parental leave and pay, including making them day one rights.
   
• Require large employers to monitor and publish data on gender, ethnicity, disability, and LGBT+ employment levels, pay gaps and progression and publish five-year aspirational diversity targets.
   
• Raise employers’ awareness of the Access to Work scheme and simplify it.
   
• Introduce “Adjustment Passports” to record the adjustments, modifications and equipment a disabled person has received and ensure that Access to Work support and equipment stays with the person if they change jobs.
   
• Reform the Statutory Sick Pay system by aligning its rate with the National Minimum Wage making it available from the first day of sickness.  Support small employers with Statutory Sick Pay costs and consult with them on the best way to do this. 

Conservative Party 

• Continue to implement minimum service levels legislation to limit the impact of industrial action on public services.
   
• Overhaul the fit note process so that responsibility for issuing fit notes is moved away from GPs and given to specialist work and health professionals.
   
• Abolish the main rate of National Insurance Contributions payable by the self-employed by the end of the next Parliament.
   
• Cut employee National Insurance to 6% by April 2027.

Green Party 

• Repeal the current “anti-union legislation” and replace it with a “Charter of Workers’ Rights”, with the right to strike at its heart along with a legal obligation for all employers to recognise trade unions.
   
• A maximum 10:1 pay ratio for all private and public sector organisations.
   
• An increase in the minimum wage to £15 an hour, regardless of age, with the costs to small businesses offset by reducing their National Insurance payments.
   
• Equal employment rights for all workers from their first day of employment, including those working in the “gig economy” and on zero hours contracts. Gig employers that repeatedly break employment, data protection or tax law to be denied licences to operate.
   
• A move to a four-day working week. 

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