Employment Bill Amendments

The Government will today publish the amended Employment Bill with over 250 amendments. The Bill is already known to contain the right to claim Unfair Dismissal from day 1 of employment instead of a 2 year waiting period, but look out for some slight changes to the previous headlines.

• Sick Pay from first day of absence for low paid workers. Any worker who earns less than £123 per week will become entitled to SSP at 80% of their weekly earnings, or £116 per week, which ever is lower.  The change is notable because it gives low paid workers the right to sick pay from the first day of absence instead of waiting 3 days. This change is not funded by the government and the cost will be met by the Employer themselves.

• Zero Hours Contracts will be affectively banned, or made almost unworkable, and agency workers are being expressly included in this. The new rules will mean that any worker will need to be offered a minimum hours contract based on the hours they worked in the previous reference period. That period is expected to be 12 weeks although we don’t have certainty on that yet.  Compensation is also going to be built in where employers seek to change hours at short notice.

• Trade Union recognition ballots can currently be forced where 10% of the workforce want it (that’s a little over simplified but in broad terms correct).  This threshold has been tipped to change to 2%.  If correct, this will be a significant change and could cause headaches for the unprepared employer.

One thing we know is unlikely to be included in the Bill is the ‘right to switch off’ as it was reported yesterday that Labour were abandoning their plans in relation to this right.

The Bill and its amendments are likely to be a significant talking point in the coming months and this will be worth tracking as it progresses.