The Bill implements key pledges from the Plan to Make Work Pay, ranging from introducing day one rights and greater protection against harassment, to tighter regulation of fire and rehire and zero-hours contracts.

A quick look………

Day One Rights

The Bill will repeal the current two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal.  It remain unclear what timeframe will replace the two year period and commentary suggests that full protection will not exist for employees until  “a proper assessment of an employee’s suitability to a role” in the first few months.  The "initial period of employment" (IPE), enables a modified version of the right to unfair dismissal to apply.  The duration of this IPE is not yet specified but will be determined through regulations. The government's current preference is for a nine-month period.

Fire and Rehire

The Bill introduces a new ground of automatically unfair dismissal, where the sole or principal reason for the dismissal is that (a) the employer sought to vary the employee’s contract of employment; and (b) the employee did not agree to the variation or (c) to enable the employer to recruit another person (or rehire the employee) under new terms but with substantially the same duties.   The result is essentially a blanket ban on the practice of fire and rehire / dismissal and reengagement. It is (will be) automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for refusing to agree to a variation in contract.  Once you have agreed terms with an employee, you are stuck with them unless the employee consents to a variation.

Protection from harassment

There is already  legal duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers (the 'preventative duty').  The Bill will further expand the duty by requiring employers to take “all” reasonable steps to prevent employees from being sexually harassed at work.   In practice this means that employers now have a duty to anticipate when sexual harassment may occur and take reasonable steps to prevent it.  If sexual harassment has taken place, an employer should take action to stop it from happening again.  This sends a clear signal to all employers that they must take reasonable preventative steps against sexual harassment, encourage cultural change where necessary, and reduce the likelihood of sexual harassment occurring.

Zero Hours Contracts

The Bill does not eradicate zero hours contracts but instead sets out a new obligation on employers to make a ‘guaranteed hours offer’ to qualifying workers.  This will essentially require an employer to make work available to the worker for a minimum number of hours, reflecting the average of those worked over a reference period.  There are also provisions for workers to receive reasonable notice of a shift, or of any cancellation or changes to a shift. Workers will then be entitled to receive compensation for any shifts cancelled, moved or curtailed, the amount of that compensation to be set out in regulations.