ACS shares concerns over government’s new Employment Rights Bill

The ACS and retailers have expressed concerns over the government’s new Employment Rights Bill.

The Bill, which aligns with Labour’s manifesto commitment to ‘make work pay’, includes measures such as strengthening statutory sick pay and requiring additional procedures to ensure two-sided flexibility is in place.

Association of Convenience Stores chief executive James Lowman said the latter is “already” provided by the convenience sector, and that the trade body has concerns that the Bill imposes “unnecessary processes and procedures for employers that are already doing the right thing”.

 “The convenience sector employs almost half a million people across the UK, already providing genuine two-sided flexibility and secure local jobs, with over 95% of colleagues in stores on permanent contracts,” he said.  “We are committed to working with the government to ensure that the measures in the Bill are pro-worker, pro-business and pro-investment.”

Lowman added that retailers are also concerned about “how new sick pay rules can help promote rather than reduce attendance at work”.

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He continued: “In a tight labour market with a high proportion of the workforce unable to work due to illness, we need to support those people while giving confidence to businesses that the people they employ will come to work if they are able to. In shops employing two or three people on shift at any one time, staff absence can see a business grind to a halt. We welcome the government’s forthcoming consultation on statutory sick pay and will be highlighting our concerns to ensure that the new rules balance the needs of both workers and businesses.”

Measures announced in the Employment Rights Bill include:

• Ending exploitative zero hours contracts and the right to guaranteed hours based on the hours worked during a 12-week reference period
• Giving greater protections against unfair dismissal from day one of employment
• Day one rights for paternity, parental and bereavement leave for workers
• Changing the law to make flexible working the default for all, unless the employer can prove it’s unreasonable
• Tackling low pay by accounting for the cost of living when setting the Minimum Wage and removing age bands (as already announced in the remit given to the Low Pay Commission earlier this year)
• Establishing a new Fair Work Agency that will bring together different government enforcement bodies, enforce holiday pay and strengthen statutory sick pay
• Requiring employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace
• Requiring reasonable notice for shift changes, and payment to colleagues for change or cancellation of shifts at short notice (specifics of notice periods to be determined) 

As part of its ‘Make Work Pay’ plan, the government is also consulting on a range of additional reforms to employment rules, including the introduction of a ‘Right to Switch Off’ outside of normal working hours and an expansion of the Equality (Race and Disparity) Bill to make it mandatory for large employers to report their ethnicity and disability pay gap.

The Employment Rights Bill and additional consultations are available in full here.

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