Breaking: Labour government won't implement existing right for workers to request predictable hours

The Department for Business and Trade has said that it has ‘no plans’ to introduce the secondary legislation necessary to implement the Worker (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023.

The Act gives some workers the right to ask their employer for a more predictable working pattern including the right to work for a certain number of hours, or on particular days of the week. It also applies to workers engaged under fixed term contracts of less than 12 months and provides that employers can only turn down requests if they have a business reason for doing so. 

Although the Act came into force on 18 September 2023, it set out a framework and needed separate regulations to explain exactly how the principles would work. We expected the previous government to do this, but it called the election before that happened. That meant it was down to the new government to decide how to proceed. 

The Labour Party's employment law pledges contained in its Make Work Pay plan included its intention to end ‘one sided flexibility’ between employers and workers. It promised to ensure that ‘all jobs provide a baseline level of security and predictability’ and for workers to ‘have the right to have a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work, based on a twelve-week reference period’. 

It could have used the existing Act to easily make some of these changes with a view to strengthening them later on. But it's decided against that approach - it says - because it didn't want to confuse employers and workers by having two different models. The Act will, therefore, be repealed in due course.

The government has said that it intends to implement the Make Work Pay plan in full. The Employment Bill is due to be published soon and we'll need to wait and see if this new right is included. We'll keep you posted. 

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