Latest editorial
A Next store in London
RETAILER Next faces an estimated £30 million equal pay bill after an employment tribunal ruled it had indirectly sexually discriminated against sales consultants by paying them lower hourly rates than their warehouse workers.
The fashion retailer must now compensate more than 3,500 current and former store staff, who are overwhelmingly female, for up to six years of lost earnings which averaged at more than £6,000 per year each.
The unions are unhappy with the Employment Rights Act 2025 and with good reason. KEITH EWING and Lord JOHN HENDY KC take a close look at why the Bill promised more than it delivered
Half a century after transformative laws reshaped Britain, women’s rights are again contested. This International Women’s Day is a call to remember how change was won, and to organise to defend it, says KATE RAMSDEN
Employment lawyer ALICE BOWMAN warns ‘day one rights’ include an undefined ‘initial period’ and the zero-hours contract fixes create baffling fixed-term loopholes. If the Bill doesn’t work properly and deliver, Labour is doomed
The Bill addresses some exploitation but leaves trade unions heavily regulated, most workers without collective bargaining coverage, and fails to tackle the balance of power that enables constant mutation of bad practice, write KEITH EWING and LORD JOHN HENDY KC