Sick pay and parental leave part of major overhaul

Millions of people will be able to get statutory sick pay from the first day they are ill and claim unpaid parental leave from day one, under a planned overhaul of workers’ rights.

However, certain measures in the Employment Rights Bill have been criticised for being watered down or delayed.

Most of the planned changes will not take effect for two years following a period of consultation.

The government said the bill marked the “biggest upgrade to rights at work for a generation”, but business groups are concerned about how the changes will work in practice.

The government is seeking to be pro-worker and pro-business and striking that balance means that much of the detail is still to be decided.

As part of the plans, the existing two-year qualifying period for protections from unfair dismissal will be removed.

Ministers have said this will benefit about nine million workers who have been with their current employer for less than two years.

However, workers will be subject to a proposed nine-month probation period when they can still be sacked without a full process.

If a worker is sacked within those nine months, it is unclear under what circumstances they can make a claim for unfair dismissal and when they cannot.

Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses, suggested the new bill was a “rushed job, clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned”.

She said that smaller firms would be left “scrabbling to make sense” of the changes.

• Statutory sick pay (SSP): Workers will be entitled to SSP from the first day they are ill, rather than the fourth day
• Lower earnings limit for SSP: Currently, workers earning less than £123 per week cannot claim SSP. This limit will be removed but the bill will set out a lesser level of sick pay for lower earners
• Paternity leave: Fathers to be eligible from day one of employment, instead of 26 weeks
• Unpaid parental leave: Parents to be eligible from day one of employment, instead of one year
• Unpaid bereavement leave: To become a “day one” right for workers
• Flexible working: Bosses will be expected to consider any flexible working requests made from day one, and say yes unless they can prove it is unreasonable

Roughly 30,000 fathers or partners will be eligible for paternity leave as a result, while 1.5 million parents will have the right to unpaid leave from day one under the changes.

“Too many people are drawn into a race to the bottom, denied the security they need to raise a family while businesses are unable to retain the workers they need to grow,” said Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.

“We’re raising the floor on rights at work to deliver a stronger, fairer and brighter future of work for Britain.”

The government will also consult on a new statutory probation period for new hires, with a recommendation of a period of nine months.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds had previously suggested a maximum period of six months, but it has proven a tricky subject during discussions.

Some trade unions are worried that a short period of probation could make firms reluctant to take on new staff, or they could even cut jobs.

Dominic Ponniah, the boss of Cleanology, told the BBC his firm is delaying hiring plans and being more cautious of who it takes on.

His cleaning company has about 1,300 employees located from Scotland to Southampton.

“It’s just another thing that businesses have to contend with,” he said, adding that the new rules around sick pay, unfair dismissal and probationary periods would make business “very, very nervous”.

The matter of zero-hours contracts has also been hotly debated.

Under the new bill, bosses will have to offer workers a guaranteed-hours contract based on the hours they have clocked up during a 12-week period.

Workers on zero-hours contracts will also be entitled to “reasonable” notice ahead of any changes being made to their shifts, as well as compensation if a shift is cancelled or ended early.

Zero-hours contracts have come in for criticism in the past as the likes of factory or warehouse workers have missed out on a steady income and certain benefits.

But UKHospitality said it is the preferred policy for workers in their sector.

Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB union, welcomed the bill for “giving workers the rights they’ve been denied for so long”, but added there was a “long way to go”.

“The legislation must be watertight and without loopholes that could be used by those wanting to delay the rights workers so desperately need,” he said.

Some measures included in Labour’s plan to “Make Work Pay”, issued in the run-up to the General Election, will not feature in the bill either.

The “right to switch off” stopping employers contacting staff out of hours, for example, will be part of a “Next Steps” document in which the government will set out hopes for further reform.

Conservative shadow business secretary Kevin Hollinrake said the party would look closely at the detail of what Labour has set out.

“But businesses and the economy needs certainty, not the threat of being sent back to the 1970s, unleashing waves of low-threshold, zero-warning strikes, driving down growth and slowing productivity,” he said.