Today marks the day of the first King’s Speech for the new Labour government. If that doesn’t mean a lot to you, then in short it’s where the government’s legislative plans for the year ahead are revealed. So while there’s lots (and we mean seriously lots!) of pomp and ceremony, it also provides an opportunity to get a much clearer roadmap of the potential reform within the next 12 months, helping provide the public and business greater certainty over upcoming legal developments.

From an employment perspective, let’s just say we’ve had a bit of a whopper! If you listened in to the speech then you’d be forgiven for thinking there was little in there that employers might need to take note of. That conclusion would be wrong. We are very much dealing with a case of ‘the devil is in the detail’, as is evident upon a review of the accompanying background briefing notes that were published on gov.uk as the speech got underway.

It is not Wiggin that has coined the phrase “the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation”. This is the government’s own language that appears in the very first paragraph of the section announcing the new Employment Rights Bill, which they plan to bring into force in their first 100 days of government. Yes, that’s the next 3 months!

So does this really represent a vast overhaul of the employment law landscape, or is it more of a damp squib? Time will ultimately tell us the answer to this, as there are no draft bills published for us to really get into the small print. But on the face of it the changes certainly do appear to represent a substantial extension of statutory employment protections in a wide range of areas. This will therefore be very significant for all employers regardless of sector, although the changes are likely to be felt particularly strongly by those sectors with workforces that can often be atypical (for example, Film and TV production, Interactive Entertainment and ‘gig-economy’ style employers).

Read on below for what we consider are likely to the most important changes, together with our initial thoughts on these:

• Firstly, the big one. The new Employment Rights Bill will make parental leave, sick pay and (most importantly!) protection from unfair dismissal day one rights “for all workers”. Currently, unfair dismissal rights only apply to ‘employees’ with two years’ of service. It’s suggested that employers will retain the ability to operate probationary periods to assess new hires, but even so this is a colossal change from the current, fairly relaxed approach to these rights (which arguably severely limits an employee’s ability to challenge unfair working practices). Whilst the sick pay and parental leave changes are unlikely to require a significant change in approach from most employers, should the new bill pass then employers will need to get much (much!) better at assessing the suitability and performance of new hires at an early stage and using probation periods for what they are actually supposed to be for. From a media perspective (and particularly for Film and TV businesses), the extension of unfair dismissal rights to workers is also hugely significant and could considerably change hiring and firing practices for freelance crew and talent;
• Next up, the new bill is apparently set to make “flexible working the default from day-one for all workers, with employers required to accommodate this as far as is reasonable, to reflect the modern workplace”. There is no further detail on this, but reading between the lines this does suggest a considerable revamp to the current laws on flexible working, which effectively allow employers to reject flexible working requests for any legitimate business reason (provided they don’t discriminate etc). Being ‘required to accommodate’ would suggest there will be much more scope for workers to challenge their employers if an unfair approach is taken to requests for flexible working arrangements. Again, this would seem to have applicability to all businesses, regardless of the sector, although the media industry should take particular note given the regular use of freelance workers in the sector;
• Protections for new mothers are set to be strengthened by making it unlawful to “dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work, except in specific circumstances”. The key here will be what those ‘specific circumstances’ are.  Will fair dismissals (i.e. for redundancy) be permitted? You would presume so, but the wording used here does suggest significantly increased protection for mothers who want to return to work;
• The bill will ban “exploitative zero-hour contracts, ensuring workers have a right to a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work”. Flexible, zero-hours work has been a bug bear of the Labour Party for some time now so it’s not surprising to see this covered within the new proposals, although this is unlikely to be especially significant for media and technology businesses as genuine zero-hour contracts do not tend to be utilised in these sectors that much;
• The national minimum wage will be overhauled and purportedly reflect “a genuine living wage that accounts for the cost of living” that will “remove the discriminatory age bands to ensure every adult worker benefits”. This will clearly be important for certain roles and businesses (and particularly those that regularly utilise interns and apprentices), but should not be too alarming for many of the clients Wiggin advises given most of our clients’ workforces tend to be paid considerably more than the current minimum wage;
• Another key Labour mission has been to end ‘Fire and Rehire’ and that is exactly what is proposed, with the new bill apparently bringing about reform to provide effective new remedies to employees who experience this practice. This is another area that doesn’t tend to be that relevant to media and technology businesses, but it will be interesting to see the detail once the draft bill is published in case this has broader effect than would initially appear to be the case;
• Another facet being dealt with by the new bill is the bolstering of trade union law. The new legislation will remove “unnecessary restrictions on trade union activity” and ensure “industrial relations are based around good faith negotiation and bargaining”. It will also apparently simplify the process of obtaining statutory recognition of a trade union within UK businesses (which is currently far from straightforward, as can be seen by Amazon’s success preventing this at its warehouse recently in Coventry). The UK’s collective bargaining and trade union laws are currently very restrictive, particularly compared to mainland Europe and also, arguably, the US. These developments could therefore be very significant, particularly for sectors like Film and TV which are still left dealing with the impact of last year’s US WGA and SAG strikes;
• Enhanced protections for ethnic minorities and disabled workers will also be introduced (although it would appear these will be legislated for separately, so not within the first 100 days). The main change is the right to equal pay for all ethnic minorities and disabled people. Paying less to someone because of a disability or their race is already unlawful, so these changes are likely to go further than that, presumably by introducing similar implied contractual protections into workers’ contracts as have been present for some time in a sex equality context.  Mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting obligations will also be introduced for employers with over 250 employees (which is consistent with the current rules for gender pay gap reporting); and
• Last but not least, a new “Single Enforcement Body, also known as a Fair Work Agency” will be established to help enforce workplace rights. There is no detail on what this will mean in practice, but we would expect this to provide routes to much swifter decisions in employment disputes.  A stark difference you would assume then from the current debacle of the nationwide employment tribunal backlog!

There is going to be a lot to unpack here. The scope of the new reforms (which you would assume will be the first of a number of new employment bills for the new government) is far more extensive that anticipated. Business and HR professionals will likely have some (re)thinking to do once the new reforms are fleshed out in more detail, but there is genuinely no need to panic here. A fairer rebalancing of the employment rights landscape could potentially prove to be an important part of the new government’s growth and productivity agenda (that is ultimately their objective with these changes) – time will again be the test of that. But regardless, we have no doubt it will be possible to chart efficient ways to navigate through the new regulations once they are in force.

We’ll of course remain fully across all future developments in this area so please do stay tuned for further briefings as and when we know more. There may well be a few…