.png)
4 hours ago
3
The government is to ditch its flagship policy from the workers’ rights bill, removing the right to protection from unfair dismissal from the first day of employment and replacing it with a six-month threshold.
The move comes after the business secretary, Peter Kyle, told businesses at the CBI conference this week that he would listen to concerns about the effects of the law change on hiring. A trade union source told the Guardian: “They’ve capitulated and there may be more to come.”
The TUC said it was prepared to accept the compromise arrangement, after days of negotiation. “The absolute priority now is to get these rights – like day one sick pay - on the statute book so that working people can start benefitting from them from next April,” its general secretary Paul Nowak said.
Kyle has replaced Jonathan Reynolds as business secretary, the latter having steered through the legislation with the former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner.
Kyle committed on Monday to ensuring businesses would not “lose” as a result of the changes, which included a ban on zero-hour contracts and day-one protections for workers against unfair dismissal.
“I will not allow it to become zero-sum, [you] give one to the other, the other loses … This has to be got right,” he said.
A union source said the changes had been agreed to allow the bill to progress faster through the House of Lords, which has significantly delayed the legislation. It will mean the qualifying period for unfair dismissal will be reduced from two years to six months.
The bill had originally promised that period would be removed altogether and
the government had proposed a lighter touch probation period that businesses could use instead, limited in law to nine months. That will now be removed and the law will make it impossible for an employee to claim unfair dismissal if they have been in post for less than six months.
Unions insisted they had won concessions, including on costs, but the move is likely to anger leftwing Labour MPs who regarded the employment rights bill as one of their key offerings.
The bill has been amended three times by Tory and Liberal Democrat peers in the Lords to accommodate key business demands. Kyle had said he would do “what it takes” to unblock parliamentary hold-ups to the bill because of the Lords amendments, before then consulting on its implementation.
“The voice of business, the voice of people who work in business, will be heard when we get down into the weeds of implementing those key parts of the employment rights bill. And yes, I’m talking about zero hours contracts and day-one rights,” he said.
The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch
“This is yet another humiliating u-turn. Labour talk about stability but govern in chaos. No company can plan, invest or hire with this level of uncertainty hanging over them.
“But the Employment Rights Bill still contains measures that will damage businesses and be terrible for economic growth, and the Conservatives will fight every single one. If Labour won’t scrap the worst elements of this awful Bill, we will. Britain cannot build prosperity with more and more bureaucracy.”
