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Labour’s manifesto promised to make a number of changes to what it called “outdated employment laws” through the implementation of “Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People”, which the party said would include: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

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?

We are rating this pledge as ‘not kept’. Although the Employment Rights Bill was introduced within Labour’s first 100 days in office, and has now passed into law, one of the measures specified in Labour’s manifesto, ”introducing basic rights from day one to [...] protection from unfair dismissal”, will instead be introduced six months into employment, not on day one, therefore the measures have not been implemented “in full” as promised.

Legislation to introduce many of the changes outlined in Labour’s ‘New Deal for Working People’ was presented to Parliament on 10 October 2024—within 100 days of Labour entering government, so this part of the pledge has been achieved.

But in November 2025, after the Bill’s progress stalled due to House of Lords amendments returning twice to the Commons, the government confirmed that it would make amendments to change the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from one day of employment (as promised in its manifesto) to six months. The government said “constructive conversations” between trade unions and businesses had led to the change, “to ensure [the Bill] can reach Royal Assent and keep to the Government’s published delivery timeline”. The Employment Rights Act passed into law in December 2026.

While the Act will, from 1 January 2027, reduce the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from two years to six months, this is still higher than the “day one” protection explicitly mentioned in Labour’s manifesto promise, in its Plan to Make Work Pay, and in the original version of the Bill.

After winning the election, multiple government ministers, Labour MPs and Lords repeated the promise to introduce protection from unfair dismissal “from day one” after winning the election. This continued as late as 5 November 2025, when employment rights minister Kate Dearden MP said, during a debate on the consideration of the House of Lords’ amendment: “We remain committed to delivering unfair dismissal protections from day one—not two years, not six months, but day one. That was a clear pledge in our manifesto”.

Following the change outlined later that month, several Labour MPs accused the government of breaking its manifesto promise.

In response to a Sky News journalist who said the government had broken a manifesto promise, business secretary Peter Kyle MP said he didn’t accept that the change outlined in November 2025 was a breach of Labour’s manifesto commitments. He said: “The manifesto committed to day one rights, we are delivering day one rights. The manifesto [also] committed us to finding compromise and finding ways that we would never pit employers against employees, and we are delivering on that.”

The Act delivers the other changes Labour promised in its manifesto as part of this pledge, which will be implemented at various points in the coming months and throughout 2027. Among other measures, it includes the following:

• 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 and sick pay.
  
  
• 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”.
  
  
• A single enforcement body: Establishing the Fair Work Agency, which the government says, among other functions, will bring together the enforcement of domestic agency rules, the National Minimum Wage, licensing of gangmasters and action against serious labour exploitation.