\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>ill the employment rights bill be passed by Christmas? Well, the chances are slightly improved after six leading business groups published a temperature-lowering letter on Monday that said parliament, which in this instance means the blockers in the House of Lords, should get on with it.<\/p>\n The employers, note, are still unhappy about the issue that triggered the most recent revolt by Conservative peers and a few cross-benchers: the removal of a cap on compensation claims for unfair dismissal. But they\u2019re more worried that further delays would jeopardise their negotiating victory last month, namely the government\u2019s U-turn on rights guaranteeing workers protection against unfair dismissal from day one of employment. A six-month qualifying period was adopted instead, with the blessing of the TUC, which was similarly motivated by trying to get the bill over the line quickly.<\/p>\n The Lords is still free to object and add amendments again, of course. But there is now a general mood that it would be seriously out of touch if it did so.<\/p>\n However, it would be a mistake to think that royal assent will mark the moment when the lobbying ends and everybody, employers and unions alike, can concentrate on implementation. In fact, the reverse is true. The extraordinary feature of the employment rights bill is that many critical details have been deliberately left to be resolved in secondary legislation.<\/p>\n Take the introduction of guaranteed hours contracts. This flows from the laudable aim of tackling abuses of zero-hours contracts. But it\u2019s not clear how a worker\u2019s right to guaranteed hours, having worked those hours regularly during a reference period, would operate in practice.<\/p>\n What is the threshold for a \u201clow hours worker\u201d? Does it mean as few as eight hours a week or, say, as many as 30? How regular is \u201cregular work\u201d? How long is the reference period? Employers warn of unintended consequences if they are disincentivised from offering extra casual hours to existing employees. Unions warn of the danger of creating loopholes or leaving ambiguities. The point is that the primary legislation leaves key details to be worked out later.<\/p>\n Other items on the employer groups\u2019 list of \u201cconcerns\u201d, aside from the compensation system in unfair dismissal tribunals, include issues related to \u201cseasonal and temporary workers, thresholds for industrial action, and the practical application of union rules\u201d. They are all mini-battles that also lie ahead.<\/p>\n The business secretary, Peter Kyle, welcoming the employers\u2019 letter, assured all sides he\u2019s keen to see \u201cthe spirit of consensus and cooperation\u201d continue, emphasising that \u201cwe are committed to extensive consultation on [the bill\u2019s] detailed implementation and in secondary legislation\u201d. Yes, that\u2019s the right message while the ping-pong between the Commons and Lords is unresolved. But \u201cextensive\u201d consultations, one assumes, means lengthy consultations, so this is all going to take a while even after the bill passes.<\/p>\n One can take the view that this is how industrial relations should be improved \u2013 by thrashing out on-the-ground details once high-level principles have been passed by parliament. Maybe, but it also all feels as if the government, in its rush to meet the manifesto commitment to introduce legislation within 100 days of taking office, left too many hard details undone. The secondary legislation will be when the arguments properly start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Will the employment rights bill be passed by Christmas? Well, the chances are slightly improved after six leading business groups published a temperature-lowering letter on Monday that said parliament, which in this instance means the blockers in the House of Lords, should get on with it. The employers, note, are still unhappy about the issue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3774,1285,142,4167,4168,20829,702,2685,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-37818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-barely","9":"tag-big","10":"tag-bill","11":"tag-nils","12":"tag-pratley","13":"tag-quarrels","14":"tag-rights","15":"tag-started","16":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37818","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=37818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}