David Greenhalgh questions who will do senior-level tasks if artificial intelligence takes on junior work
The UK has passed the most significant overhaul of employment law in a generation. The Employment Rights Act 2025 will, among many changes, bring in a shorter qualifying period for unfair dismissal, remove the unfair dismissal compensation cap, and force employers to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment.
Despite this wide-ranging scope, it fails to tackle one of the central issues in employment at present: automation. Rishi Sunak, who is now an adviser to AI firm Anthropic and Microsoft, has said that AI is flattening the jobs market for young people, especially in service sectors such as law, accountancy and the creative industries.
AI is evidently displacing more of the work that had previously allowed young staff to learn their craft – for prospective lawyers that work would have included producing first drafts of documents, carrying out legal research and drafting standard correspondence. When that junior work is swallowed up by the use of LLMs or AI agents, training grounds also disappear.
Employers, of course, are not blind to economics. An AI licence costs a fraction of a graduate salary, requires no annual leave and doesn’t carry the risk of an individual bringing an employment tribunal claim. This has meant that junior intakes are being reduced, trainee programmes streamlined and apprentice headcounts trimmed. While some popular commentary...
KUALA TERENGGANU: Three Rahmah Sales Programme (PJRM) operators in Terengganu have been suspended after being found guilty of violating operational guidelines, including submitting false subsidy c...