\n<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer is facing backbench anger after ministers abandoned plans to give workers day-one protection against unfair dismissal, a U-turn that breaches the Labour manifesto.<\/p>\n
MPs including a former minister who spearheaded the employment rights bill with the former deputy leader Angela Rayner have voiced concerns over the climbdown announced by the government.<\/p>\n
Ministers have axed the proposal to remove the 24-month \u201cqualifying period\u201d for workers to make an unfair dismissal claim and allow them to do so from the first day in a new job, to try to get the legislation through parliament.<\/p>\n
The bill was caught in a standoff between peers and MPs over the original plan to give workers the protection on day one, as well as measures to ban \u201cexploitative\u201d zero-hours contracts.<\/p>\n
The government now intends to introduce the right over unfair dismissal after six months of service instead, while other day-one rights to paternity leave and sick pay are still due to go ahead, coming into effect in April 2026.<\/p>\n
The Labour MP for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, Andy McDonald, described the move as a \u201ccomplete betrayal\u201d and vowed to push for its reversal.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe cannot support that halfway measure.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThis is a wrong-headed move and I will campaign to have this concession reversed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Labour MP for Poole, Neil Duncan-Jordan, said: \u201cThere has been no discussion with the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] about this. The Lords don\u2019t have primacy over a manifesto commitment, so why have we capitulated?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Labour MP for York Central, Rachael Maskell, said: \u201cEmployers have nothing to fear from day-one rights, but workers have everything to fear from an employer who doesn\u2019t want day-one rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former employment minister Justin Madders, who was sacked in the prime minister\u2019s reshuffle earlier this year, said it \u201cdefinitely is a manifesto breach\u201d.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s manifesto explicitly promised to \u201cconsult fully with businesses, workers, and civil society on how to put our plans into practice before legislation is passed\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will include banning exploitative zero-hours contracts; ending fire and rehire; and introducing basic rights from day one to parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said there was a \u201cvery real prospect\u201d the implementation of the employment rights bill would have been delayed if the government had not made a U-turn over day one protections against unfair dismissal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been discussion on the point around unfair dismissal and the time period between businesses, the TUC and government, and following that discussion there\u2019s been agreement about the way forward, which is welcome,\u201d she told Sky News.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means that the time limit will come down from two years to six months, and that runs alongside important day-one rights around sick pay and around parental leave. But the risk here was that if we didn\u2019t make progress, those important rights wouldn\u2019t come into force from April next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if it was a broken promise, Phillipson said: \u201cIn the manifesto, what we said was that we would work with trade unions, with business, with civil society, in consulting on those protections that we\u2019d be bringing forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, there are both parts to that, within the manifesto, the important rights and the consultation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Keir Starmer is facing backbench anger after ministers abandoned plans to give workers day-one protection against unfair dismissal, a U-turn that breaches the Labour manifesto. MPs including a former minister who spearheaded the employment rights bill with the former deputy leader Angela Rayner have voiced concerns over the climbdown announced by the government. Ministers have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[673,3920,2947,134,414,702,1347,14051,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-35602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-attack","9":"tag-betrayal","10":"tag-complete","11":"tag-labour","12":"tag-mps","13":"tag-rights","14":"tag-starmer","15":"tag-uturn","16":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}