The Department for the Economy announced the most significant changes in a decade to the NI employment law framework in July 2024, by way of a proposed ‘Good Jobs’ Employment Rights Bill, promised to deliver meaningful change for NI employers and employees alike. See our dashboard for a full breakdown of the proposed reforms.
Public consultation on the wide-reaching reforms was launched in summer 2024, but progress in delivering this bill into law has stalled. With just 14 months remaining before the end of the current NI Assembly mandate in 2027, the clock is ticking.
Leeanne Armstrong, Managing Associate, spoke with Kate Nicholl, Alliance MLA for South Belfast and member of the Economy Committee about the road ahead for the bill, in our recent podcast. Below, we set out where the bill is now, what is needed to make this law and what this means for the NI employers in the short term.
Despite initial optimism that draft legislation would be before the Assembly by January 2025, that timeline has slipped. Following the public consultation which ran from 1 July to 30 September 2024 and attracted 192 responses, the Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald made a statement on 25 April 2025 setting out the proposed content of the bill. Stakeholders had anticipated receiving the printed bill shortly after Easter 2025, but as of the most recent Economy Committee meeting in February 2026, officials confirmed that the...
Kenneth Scott Miller, 48, is charged with a felony count of making a false report to law enforcement. He was released from the Escambia County Jail on a $500 bond. According to an Escambia County ...