What's in Labour's new Employment Rights bill?

Labour’s employment rights bill is a big step towards making sweeping changes to rights at work and improvements to pay.

But what's in it?

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[dom]

The P&O scandal was shocking. People should have been jailed for that for exploitation.

[Jaaj]

The right to switch off should not be about stopping people from contacting each other after work hours - it's about allowing people to decide not to answer/engage in those discussions after hours without being reprimanded for it. I also think it should include the right not to use your personal hardware and number for work reasons, the number or companies I deal with that force you to provide your personal number and then contact you on it to discuss work - further still these is a major raise in installation of monitoring and work applications on personal devices.

[MartinMc]

6:40 I work from home. You CANNOT look after a child at the same time. You STILL need childcare. I fear my work from home will get taken away because of that belief.

[spaztastic]

I love working from home, it works well with my disabilities and im more productive because of it. I cant afford housing where my work is (got the job during lockdown, and have since gotten married, no longer living in my parents house), so travelling to work uses up a lot of my brain power before and after work...its exhausing.

[charleys]

I'm a younger millenial and started a new job working from home during the pandemic. Absolutely adore my job and managed to get promoted at the first attempt as soon as I was eligible so it hasn't hindered career progression in the slightest. I chat to my co-workers every single day while WFH and it's genuinely productive chat, not the boring small talk that I used to get in my old workplaces. My organisation have since changed to a hybrid policy where I now have to go into the office once a month. There is no one in my entire division based at the same site as me. On my last office day, the ONLY person I spoke to all day was the barista when I bought my morning coffee. Whole day in the office surrounded by people and no one said a word, and it wasn't through a lack of trying on my part. That is a far more isolating and depressing experience than working from home could ever possibly be. The world of work has fundamentally changed and I will fight tooth and nail to keep WFH as my default option

[petersmith]

Australia has/had a version of zero hours that i really liked when I lived there - Casual Work Contract. Ot was zero guaranteed hours, but you got other benefits that motivate the employer to give a proper contact. So where minimum wage was something like $14 an hour, on this casual work you got $20 min an hour. Also a set if other benefits - like you can cancel you shift up to an hour before atart time and not get fired or in trouble.

[Sankara]

Counterpoint: young or senior, if you depend on going into an office for human contact you need to make changes to your life. WFH allows me to train BJJ 5x a week, take my kids to clubs 3x a week, volunteer with a charity once a week and more and all practically within the time I would otherwise be wasting commuting. This is hours of quality social contact and community involvement that talking about a spreadsheet at a water cooler would be miserable compensation for.

[spaztastic]

Does the right to disconnect include teachers?....Would be nice to get my husband back in the evening ahaha

[Paul]

The argument that WFH makes people isolated drives me mad. The workplace is not the only place to interact with people. The reality is people are now lazy with making social connections and confuse having colleagues with having meaningful long lasting friendships.

[Lynnpjjbdndji]

Thatcher did it when privatetising school dinners and cutting there wage .... It cost the public 3 Billion in comparison 8 years later ... !

[dragoncut]

The gay economy are on 0 hours contracts?

I thought Tory MPs were PAYE

[Reprogrammed_By_SEGA]

Nothing in it regarding fixing holiday entitlement. I work 48 hours a week and only get 22.4 days off which is not enough and I can't even get the 0.4 off employers won't round it up to a day and they will only let me use it if I take a whole shift off. So I end up losing more money.

[cjpalmi]

You're confusing flexible (the how, where, and when) with hybrid (just where). In most companies flexible means offering a job-share, part time, compressed hours etc.

The bill doesn't speak about hybrid/home working specifically

[lil_winky]

Now I know Laura is talking about 'gig economy' but it did reeeeaallly sound like the gay economy 🤣

[oJ]

I have the option to work from home, i think it's right that people have the option but I like going into work. I loathed being forced to work at home during covid. I like the separation of home and work, I like walking or cycling into work, I like getting to see different faces and interact with people in person. Commuting is so bad in the UK largely because of dependence and prioritisation of cars. I'm worried if working from home becomes default I'll lose the option to work somewhere else. Another step towards isolated semi-detached island living imo

[neiljaphtha]

On the subject of sending emails out of hours. I feel like people should be able to send them whenever they like. I think It's on the individual to handle their notifications, so they don't get distracted.

[joejjj]

I think the answer as to why they're bringing some of these things up now is because they can give us them for essentially free

[rebekkahill]

If you don't drive, too many jobs in the UK require over an hour commute by public transport, even if it's less than a ten minute drive. There are also many areas in the UK where pretty much the only jobs going are call centres or retail. WFH allows for much greater opportunities as it allows you to be employed anywhere in the country. Until we fix these aspects of society, WFH needs to be an option for all employers.

[scallamander]

This whole bill is icing on a rotten cake. The basic social democratic consensus is long-gone but instead of restoring and enhancing it we get 'deckchairs on the Titanic'. I'm so fed up with unions being defensive and not staking out new genuine wins for workers like me. For example, what happened to the London minimum wage?

[blisseyran-dom]

As a student, I'm glad zero hour contracts aren't being entirely banned. Having a varied timetable each week, zero-hours are fantastic for me as I can pick up work where I can. On the other hand, I wouldn't be able to survive if I wasn't a student and on a zero-hour. This is the right decision. Taking it away from people who want it is a bad idea. They've handled this the right way.

As for the right to switch off, the way my workplace does it is really simple and effective. Send emails out of hours and don't expect a response. I have sent emails to people at ridiculous hours after office time and would never expect someone to reply. If they do, they can and should still have that right, but there is no expectation for them to. To ban sending out of hours emails would just be a pointless inconvenience.