THOSE who had hoped that Tolpuddle 2025 would have been the occasion to celebrate the enactment of the long-awaited Employment Rights Act 2025 will have to be patient.  

The Bill has been delayed in the House of Lords where a campaign is being fought by the Tories to dilute its provisions still further. The proceedings will continue next week, and the Bill is not expected to receive the Royal Assent until September.  

But Royal Assent will be only the end of the beginning. Thereafter, the wait will continue. The government has announced that only a few provisions of the Bill will come into force immediately, including the removal of some — but not all — of the restrictions on the right to strike introduced by the Tories in the Trade Union Act 2016, and again in the even more authoritarian Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023.  

The great bulk of the Bill, however, is to be phased in piecemeal so that it will not be until 2027 at the earliest that its provisions are fully implemented, with further consultations to take place between now and then.  

Under the recently published government “Roadmap,” it will be October 2026 before the changes on fire and rehire are brought into force, the Bill’s provisions on zero-hours contracts, bereavement leave, and day one rights for unfair dismissal delayed even longer until 2027.  

The next two years will thus be consumed by further consultations and drafting extensive regulations, a process which will inevitably reveal flashpoints and weaknesses, beginning with the fact that this is a Bill for some but not all workers.  

Many of its provisions apply only to employees (including those relating to flexible working, statutory sick pay, fire and rehire, and redundancy consultation), a narrow legal category which excludes large and growing numbers employed in the gig economy and elsewhere.  

The Bill thus retains and reinforces the multitier system which, in *A New Deal for Working People*, the Labour Party undertook to reform. A commitment was made there to “create a single status of worker,” to ensure that “all workers, regardless of sector, wage or contract type, will be afforded the same basic rights and protections.”  

This had been promised in order to clamp down on bogus self-employment and prevent unscrupulous employers from using loopholes to put workers in categories where they were denied basic rights. The government promises only consultation on single status — there is nothing in the Bill on the subject.  

But with the implementation of the new rights, together with the recent increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions, it would be naive to think that employers will not continue to use and expand recruitment practices that avoid and undermine workers’ rights.  

Even where practices of this kind are not adopted, a major obstacle to the Bill’s success will be its enforcement: the employment tribunals are already in a state of crisis, with an expanding case-load, and long delays confounding the need for the speedy resolution of disputes.  

These problems can be expected to grow as a result of the complexity, lack of clarity, and cost implications of various parts of the Bill. This is particularly true of the proposed day one rights, and the fire-and-rehire restrictions (diluted by the government in the Lords).  

In other situations, however, the law will be simply be unenforced. How many people on a zero-hours contract will dare to challenge their employer for failing to offer a “guaranteed hours” contract — and then wait for months to have their case heard?  

Concerns about the Bill apply with equal force to its provisions designed ostensibly to protect trade unions. Forget about the right of trade union access to a workplace for organising purposes: an access order can be granted, but there is no way an employer can be compelled to comply.  

And be sceptical too about the provisions to address union busting: if a union fails to get a declaration of recognition, it will still be three years before it can try again; even if it succeeds, an employer is not required to reach an agreement on wages or other terms and conditions.  

Amendments in the Bill to the statutory recognition procedure simply patch up what is an irretrievably broken system, which has failed to arrest the extraordinary decline in collective bargaining coverage over the last 40 years or so. Now only one in four workers is covered by a collective agreement, though even that may be an overestimate.  

That’s why *A New Deal for Working People* called for tougher government action, by proposing the roll out of sectoral collective bargaining. The need is clear: to expand the coverage of collective agreements; to empower trade unions; and to protect workers and their families.  

But sectoral collective bargaining is also about redistributing wealth, raising wages, and eliminating exploitation, to ensure — adapting the words of the ILO — that everyone enjoys a “just share of the fruits of [growth],” about which the Bill has virtually nothing to say.  

Nevertheless, reference to the ILO leads to another of the Bill’s omissions. The restrictions on the right to strike did not begin with the Trade Union Act 2016. Indeed, most of the constraints on trade unions were imposed in the Thatcher and Major years, and have been condemned by the ILO and by other agencies in international law since 1989.  

International treaties voluntarily entered into should be complied with: the rule of law requires nothing less. As a result, we should be going further with the removal of legal restrictions on the right to strike, including those regulating the purposes for which unions can organise industrial action, as well as what will continue to be complex notice and ballot requirements even after the Bill is implemented.  

And as we were reminded by the ILO after the P&O Ferries scandal, the ban on solidarity action must be removed, so that unions can at least more effectively resist employers who fail to comply with their legal obligations.  

At best, the Bill addresses some of the worst forms of exploitation. But it does not address them all, it does not address them adequately, and it will not prevent the constant mutation of bad practice.  

In failing seriously to address the balance of power at work and beyond, the Bill nods in the direction of trade union freedom and collective bargaining, yet leaves trade unions heavily regulated and the vast majority of workers without bargaining coverage.  

If the Bill is to be welcomed, it should be as the first step in what will be a very long journey.