A recent rally organised by the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom, in partnership with Strike Map, heard from union leaders, labour law experts and politicians arguing for a second Employment Rights Bill during this Parliament.
While welcoming the passage of the Employment Rights Act towards the end of 2025 and the many benefits it will bring individual workers, speakers made the case that the Act is overwhelmingly focused on just that, rights for individual workers, with little legal reset for trade union rights that have been so severely curtailed since the 1980s.
Although promoted as the biggest uplift in workers’ rights in a generation, the Act is in reality a long way short of what was promised in Labour’s Green Paper A New Deal for Working People, carried by Labour’s Conference in 2021. The Green Paper had been filleted to make the Act more acceptable to business interests, perhaps a victory for the McSweeney team that was all-pervasive in setting policy under the nominal Starmer leadership.
The Green Paper acquired additional phrasing when Making Work Pay was added to the title. Eventually however, the Government’s website quietly dumped A New Deal for Working People, listing only Make Work Pay as the title. And, as a concession to corporate interests, many of the terms of the Act were made subject to consultation, also known as opportunities for business to further intervene, to water down the provisions.
Looking at some of these measures...
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