What does the pledge mean?

Labour’s manifesto promised to make a number of changes to what it called “outdated employment laws” through the implementation of “Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People”, which the party said would include:

• “banning exploitative zero hours contracts”
• “ending fire and rehire”, the practice by which employers dismiss and re-engage employees to change their terms and conditions of employment
• “introducing basic rights from day one to parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal”, rather than being eligible for these only after a certain amount of time has passed
• changing the remit of the Low Pay Commission “so for the first time it accounts for the cost of living”.

Labour’s manifesto committed to introducing legislation to effect these changes within its first 100 days in government—a deadline of 12 October 2024.

In June 2024, after the publication of its manifesto, Labour published a document outlining proposals for its reform of workers’ rights. As well as the measures outlined above, the party also committed to:

• requiring employers to accommodate flexible working requests from day one, “except where it is not reasonably feasible”
• a consultation on moving towards a ‘single status’ of worker
• a review of the system of parental leave.

However, Labour said that some of the promises included in the ‘New Deal for Working People’ would take “longer to review and implement”, including “plans to move towards a single status of worker”. It also said it would conduct a review of the system of parental leave within its first year of government.

It is worth noting that employment law is devolved in Northern Ireland, meaning employment law changes in the rest of the UK do not automatically apply.

What progress has been made?

Legislation to introduce many of the changes outlined in Labour’s ‘New Deal for Working People’ was presented to Parliament on 10 October 2024 as the Employment Rights Bill—within 100 days of Labour entering government.

The bill is currently progressing through the House of Lords, and includes 28 of the commitments included in Labour’s ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’. As a result, we are rating this pledge as “in progress - appears on track”.

The bill extends and applies to Great Britain as a whole, although not all of its provisions have effect in each of those three nations, while some provisions also apply in Northern Ireland.

Assuming the Employment Rights Bill becomes law, it will:

• Zero hours contracts: require employers to offer “eligible workers” guaranteed hours, reflecting the hours they regularly work, as opposed to zero hours contracts.
  
  This is not a full ban on zero hours contracts. Eligible workers can reject an offer of guaranteed hours, but ministers say these changes will end “exploitative” zero hours contracts, while enabling flexibility for some workers who prefer a zero hours contract.
  
  
• ‘Fire and rehire’: restrict the use of this practice by amending the law on unfair dismissal to ordinarily treat those dismissals as automatically unfair, except in cases where the employer was facing financial circumstances likely to affect their viability, and the contract changes were unavoidable to mitigate those financial circumstances.
  
  In these cases, an employment tribunal will still need to consider whether the dismissal was fair in the circumstances. While Labour’s plan pledged to end fire and rehire, it did caveat this, saying: “It is important that businesses can restructure to remain viable, to preserve their workforce and the company when there is genuinely no alternative”.
  
  
• Introduce some workers’ rights from day one: this includes parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal, which workers are currently typically eligible for if they have worked continuously in a job for at least two years.
  
  
• Flexible working: amend the existing right to request flexible working from day one, to require employers to “explain the grounds” for rejecting requests, and to require their rejections be “reasonable”.

Other changes promised in Labour’s manifesto are being progressed outside of the Employment Rights Bill.

In July 2024, the government wrote to the Low Pay Commission to update its remit, as pledged in the manifesto, with the new remit coming into effect in September 2024. And in July 2025, the government launched a review of the parental leave system.