The Employment Rights Bill 2025

[Warbo]

Back before Angard existed when casuals were managed in house, after 12 weeks a casual contract would be ended, they'd get a P45 and then after two weeks a new casual contract started. Maybe they'll do something similar.

That is the type of exploitation that the bill is meant to be sorting.

[rogersh]

Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, significant changes are being introduced to reform zero-hours and low-hours contracts. These measures aim to end "one-sided flexibility" by providing workers with a baseline level of security.

While the Act received Royal Assent in late 2025, the new "right to guaranteed hours" is primarily expected to take effect in 2027 following a period of government consultation.

1. The Right to Guaranteed Hours
The Act mandates that employers must offer guaranteed hours to qualifying workers based on their actual working patterns.
Trigger Mechanism: Employers are legally required to offer a contract reflecting the hours regularly worked over a "reference period" (expected to be 12 weeks).

Contractual Offer: The offer must reflect the hours regularly worked and must not be on terms that are "less favourable overall" than the previous arrangement.
Applicability: This applies to workers on zero-hours contracts, those on "low hours" contracts who regularly exceed their minimums, and agency workers.
Worker Choice: Workers are not forced to accept the offer; they can choose to remain on their existing zero-hours or low-hours contract if they prefer that flexibility.

2. Notice and Cancellation of Shifts
New rights are introduced to address the unpredictability of shift-based work:
Reasonable Notice: Employers must provide "reasonable notice" of shifts, including dates, start/end times, and total hours.
Cancellation Payments: If a shift is cancelled, moved, or shortened at "short notice," the employer must pay compensation. Regulations will define what constitutes "short notice" (anticipated to be within 7 days or less).

3. Protection from Detriment and Dismissal
The Act introduces robust legal protections to prevent employers from circumventing the new rules:
Automatic Unfair Dismissal: It is automatically unfair to dismiss an employee because they accepted, rejected, or were entitled to a guaranteed hours offer.
Anti-Avoidance Measures: Regulations aim to prevent employers from deliberately manipulating or reducing a worker's hours during the reference period specifically to avoid the duty to offer a guaranteed contract.

4. Key Implementation Details
Exemptions: Employers may offer fixed-term guaranteed hours contracts (instead of permanent ones) only if it is "reasonable" to do so, such as for genuinely temporary seasonal work.
Collective Agreements: Employers and trade unions may negotiate to "contract out" of these specific rights through a collective agreement.
Agency Workers: For agency staff, the responsibility to offer guaranteed hours generally falls on the end hirer rather than the agency, though both share responsibility for providing shift notice.

[IphoneAddict]

Would be interesting how point number (2) plays out in practice with regard to Royal Mail when workloads are often only known a few hours in advance, I guess they’ll still be able to call people in at short notice if more work than expected, but they could easily find themselves with far too many people if workloads are low and guaranteed hours people are not able to be cancelled at short notice anymore (or at least not as easily).

[capaldi]

It is not going to work. Besides, it gives Angard more than a year to prepare for this. In other words, they can significantly reduce your hours in the last quarter of 2026 and therefore offer you a 6 or 12-hour contract with no regular overtime next January. Alternatively, they can offer you a new entrants RM contract with no paid breaks and lower pay rate than Angard.

I knew Labour wouldn't do anything to enhance workers rights and conditions, but didn't expect them to propose a Bill that would actually make temp workers worse off.

[Tman]

You didn't?
Starmer's whole tenure in office has been one long series of unforced (and supposedly unintended) errors, so why would this legislation be any more successful?