What do we already know?
We updated you in our February 2015 Newsletter Government reforms: Election fever – focus on the future of the main political parties’ workplace proposals should they win the election on 7 May 2015.
What’s new?
The Labour Party has included additional workplace proposals in its recently published workplace manifesto (available here) and a speech delivered by Ed Miliband.
Key items include:
- a declaration that Labour will abolish the current Tribunal fees regime “as part of reforms to make sure that workers have proper access to justice, employers get a quicker resolution, and the costs to the taxpayer are controlled“. The intention would be that ACAS would oversee a process led by the CBI and the Trades Union Congress to agree reforms to the system;
- reversing the employee shareholder “shares-for-rights scheme”, under which individuals receive at least £2,000 worth of shares in their employer (or a parent company of their employer) in return for giving up some employment rights (see our September 2013 Newsletter Government reforms (3): Employee shareholders); and
- providing a “regular contract” of employment to employees on zero hours contracts, who work regular hours for a period of at least 12 weeks.
