The government’s long anticipated Employment Rights Bill is expected to become law later this year, in what has been described by ministers as the ‘biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation’. Indeed, the measures contained in the bill appear promising: a curbing of zero-hours contracts, the banning of ‘fire and rehire’, the introduction of day-one protection from unfair dismissal, and a strengthening of redundancy consultation rules.
However, as the analysis in our pamphlet Shareholders’ Rights v Workers’ Rights argues, the promise of the government’s bill is inherently limited. Whilst the reforms are welcome, measures to meaningfully advance employment rights must address the deeply imbalanced context of corporate law and shareholder rights within the firm.
We point to the legal structuring power conferred on the owners of capital through corporate law which consistently works to legally privilege the interests of financial investors over those of workers. Without adequately confronting this imbalanced playing field on which labour relations play out, new legal rights granted to workers risk being undermined by the structuring power of the corporation.
Labour rights only matter where they can be made effective against an employer. As we show, what this means is that the legal form that an employer takes has a significance that is often downplayed in employment and labour law debates.
In labour law, the employer is typically treated as a...
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