Be prepared for proposed employment law changes!

The government has recently backed a number of new laws that will affect all employers in the coming years covering the following:

• Family rights.
• Rules around tips.
• The ability to request more stable working hours.
• There are updates in store for working laws.
• Changes to working laws could mean changes to your policies and contracts too.

Detailed below are all the important updates you need to be thinking of:

All EU-original laws might expire

A lot of the UK’s current laws were introduced by the European Union. While the government didn’t leave EU laws as soon as the UK left the EU, they wanted to have the capability to amend them.

They set out the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill to be able to do just that. This bill means all existing EU laws will expire by 31st December 2023 unless the government takes steps to keep or change them.

The government has until the end of the year to examine all of our current EU original laws and decide whether to keep, replace or completely remove them. If they haven’t decided on a law’s future by the end of the year, it may expire automatically.

This could mean broad changes to many working laws we know, like the maximum weekly working hours and the minimum length of rest breaks. Businesses will need to stay posted on any important announcements to be ready to update their documents if and when necessary.

More paid leave for parents of sick newborn babies

‘The Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill’ will give your employees the right to extra paid leave if they have babies in neonatal care.

A baby can stay in neonatal care for long periods of time if they’re born premature or sick. And many parents don’t have a lot of time off after birth – two weeks in the neonatal unit could use up a new parent’s entire statutory paternity leave.

New parents often end up taking unpaid leave or utilising their maternity or shared parental leave while they stay in hospital with the baby. This new bill will allow new parents to be able take up to 12 extra weeks off work, which would be on top of the family leave they’re already entitled to. And the rate of pay should be in line with the statutory rate for other family-related leave, like maternity, paternity, and shared parental leave.

This is to give parents more time to spend with their babies in the neonatal unit, without having to worry about pay and work.

While it’s not yet confirmed, employees will likely only be eligible for this if:

• they’re earning above the minimum lower earnings limit
• their baby is 28 days old or less
• their baby has spent a minimum of one week in a neonatal unit

Staff who provide care will get a week off every year

While new parents will get more time off to care for babies that are unwell, there will also be a new right for someone who looks after a close family member. Many people provide unpaid care for loved ones while trying to manage their jobs.

That’s set to change under the new ‘Carer’s Leave Bill’. This Bill will give your employees the right to take up to one week (five working days) of unpaid leave every year if they need to arrange or provide care for someone.

To be eligible, the person the employee cares for must both be a ‘dependant’ and have a long-term care need, like a disability. This could either be a close family member like a parent or sibling, a partner, or someone who lives with them and relies on them for care.

These employees will be able to request carer’s leave in days or a one-week block. And while it’s not certain this will be a rule just yet, they probably won’t be able to take less than half a day. They may also have to give a certain amount of notice, but the government has yet to confirm these details.

What we do know is you’re likely to have only a few limited reasons why you might be able to refuse carer’s leave if your employee makes a request.

It will be illegal to withhold tips from staff

Currently, there’s no legal right for employees to keep their tips from customers. Let’s say a customer gives a worker a tip in cash or by card. Currently the employer may be able to keep this tip or deduct from it, if that’s written in your employee’s terms of employment. Or hospitality venues which add a discretionary service charge to a customer’s bill might not think of this as an employee tip, but technically it is. Under a new law to make sure employees keep hold of their tips, the ‘Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill’ says:

• If a worker receives a tip, they’ll be entitled to it at the end of the following month – whether it’s in full or split between them and other workers.
• Employers will need a written policy on tipping, which keeps a record of tips and confirms the new rule.
• Employees will have a right to request information about how you’ve been dealing with their tips. They can only go back as far as a maximum of three years, but you’ll need to give them this information within four weeks.
• Agency workers will have the same rights to keep their tips.

~The government will also release a statutory code of practice to give businesses and employees advice on how to manage and share tips fairly.

Once an employee is able to request their tipping record, an employer could face a tribunal risk if they withhold tips.

Pregnant employees will have special protection during a redundancy

Currently, a pregnant employee doesn’t have special redundancy protection, but they do have some protection after having the baby. Under current rules, you have to offer an employee on maternity, adoption or shared parental leave a suitable alternative position ahead of your other staff.

Under the upcoming ‘Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill’, these rights will extend to cover pregnant employees too.

Once that’s in effect, employees who are expecting will have special protection from the minute they tell their employer they’re pregnant, up until their child is 18 months old.

There will be a minimum staffing level for key emergency sectors to strike

Following the strike disruption in 2022 and into 2023, the government has proposed to introduce the ‘Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill’. This would make sure there’s enough employees working in essential public services if there is a strike.

If this law comes into force, it will impact employers and employees working in key emergency sectors including:

• The health service
• Education
• Transport
• Fire and rescue
• Nuclear Decommissioning
• Management of radioactive waste
• Border security

 

It means that if you work in one of these sectors and know of plans for a strike, you’ll need to make sure there’s a minimum number of people to carry on working for it to be legal. It would be up to you how to fill any absences.

This is to help lessen the disruption of strikes and allow these sectors to keep providing a minimum service.

You may need to change your employees’ hours

It looks like there could also be a new right that allows certain employees to ask for more stable working patterns.

A new ‘Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Bill’ could give all employees who have unpredictable working hours the right to ask for more stable and predictable hours.

• This will affect:
• Zero-hour workers
• Agency staff
• Staff on a fixed-term contract which is less than 12 months

Like the flexible working requests, employers will only be able to refuse a request for a specific approved reason.

As you will see the law’s always changing, we work closely with our clients to ensure that they stay safe from risk. If for any reason you need help updating or creating your policies and contracts don’t hesitate to give us a call on 0800 9995 121