The Employment Rights Act 2025 (the Act) introduces significant changes to the employer–trade union relationship. For higher education providers, the reforms affect industrial action, recognition, facility time and union access rights, reshaping the legal framework over the coming months.
The Act reflects a deliberate recalibration of the employer–trade union framework. While many of the individual changes are technical in nature, their cumulative effect strengthens trade union rights and simplifies both recognition and industrial action processes.
Higher education institutions already operate within long-established recognition arrangements and mature collective bargaining structures. Many will also have small pockets of unrepresented bargaining units, often at senior academic and executive board levels. The reforms therefore raise two strategic questions. First, where recognition is already in place, how resilient is the existing industrial relations framework in a landscape where industrial action is procedurally easier to organise and sustain? Second, could those relatively small parts of the workforce not in a...
By Olivia GomesMay 18, 20260 comments WASHINGTON — A new analysis published by The Atlantic argues that election denial movements once viewed as politically fringe are becoming increasingly embedd...