UK Labor Law: Legislation for Proposed Significant Reforms Unveiled

The U.K.’s new Labour government has published its highly anticipated Employment Rights Bill. In total, the draft bill contains 28 stand-alone employment law reforms.

The key measures in the Employment Rights Bill are:

• Removing the two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal protection (meaning employees will have this protection from day one of employment). The government will consult on introducing a statutory probation period in which employers can assess the suitability of new hires. The government’s preference is for this probation period to be nine months, during which employers could follow a lighter touch and less onerous procedure to dismiss an employee who is not suitable for their role.
• Introducing “day-one” rights for employees to take paternity, unpaid parental and bereavement leaves, as well as giving employees an entitlement to receive statutory sick pay from day one of their sick leave (rather than day four). The entitlement to general bereavement leave is a new right (currently, eligible employees only have a right to take parental bereavement leave).
• Strengthening the flexible working request regime by requiring employers to explain in writing to an employee why any rejection of the request is reasonable. This is with the intention of making flexible working the default position, except in situations where it is not practical.
• Enhancing protections for pregnant women and new mothers, including dismissal protection during pregnancy, maternity leave, and the first six months of returning to work after maternity leave. There will also be equivalent protections for employees returning from adoption and shared parental leaves.
• Requiring large employers to create action plans to address gender pay gaps and support employees through menopause.
• Introducing employer liability for third-party harassment when the employer failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it, as well as enhancing the obligation for an employer to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.
• Making it automatically unfair for employers to dismiss employees for refusing to agree to variations to their contract (other than in very limited circumstances).
• Banning “zero-hour” (that is, casual-worker) contracts if they are deemed exploitative and entitling zero-hour workers to a guaranteed-hours contract if they work regular hours over a defined period.

The government also published a separate document outlining other proposed changes that it hopes to implement in the future, subject to stakeholder consultation. These proposals include introducing a “right to switch off,” expanding pay gap reporting to cover disability and ethnicity, removing a category of employment status so that all individuals would be either a “worker” or “genuinely self-employed,” and reviewing the unpaid leave systems for caregivers and parents. No time frame has been given for implementing these proposals.

The government does not anticipate implementing the reforms listed above before 2026 and has stated that the unfair dismissal reforms will not take place before the fall of 2026. Further, these are proposed reforms, and it is entirely possible that changes will be made following stakeholder consultation, including decisions not to proceed with certain elements. Nonetheless, it will be important for U.K. employers to start considering how these changes would impact their workforce and employment practices and to what extent they can plan for those changes.

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