'Don't dilute it' | Employment Rights Bill risks losing impact if Gov drops key reforms, thinktank warns

A new study analysing the potential impact of the Employment Rights Bill indicates that millions of workers could benefit from better job security, but only if the Government stands firm and delivers on its promise of key reforms.

New analysis from the Work Foundation at Lancaster University provides insights as to the potential impact of two key reforms in the Bill – the introduction of new day one unfair dismissal rights and the ban of ‘exploitative’ zero-hour contracts – on levels of secure, moderately insecure and severely insecure work. It does so by using the UK Insecure Work Index to assess how these key reforms could have changed levels of insecure work in 2023 had they been in place.

Researchers find that the specific details of a new statutory probation period to be introduced as part of the Bill are likely to be particularly crucial. Estimates suggest that if day one unfair dismissal rights had been in place in 2023 with a six-month statutory probation period, then 1.2 million fewer people would have experienced severe insecurity at work. This could have potentially reduced the total number of people in severely insecure work from 6.8 million to 5.6 million.

However, if a 12-month statutory probation period was applied instead, 6.1 million workers would have remained in severely insecure work, with only 700,000 experiencing more secure work. It could also have meant 1.6 million fewer workers benefitting from the most secure category of work than under a six-month probationary period.