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Senior Conservative MPs are seeking to scrap Brits’ legal rights to maximum working hours, guaranteed annual leave, and holiday pay, as Labour’s landmark workers’ rights bill makes its way through Parliament.
The Conservative MPs on the bill’s scrutiny committee, the Shadow Business Minister Greg Smith, Assistant Whips Nick Timothy and Sir Ashley Fox and Peter Bedford – have sought to table amendments to Labour’s Employment Rights Bill that would strip workplace protections from millions of British workers, including the complete removal of maximum working hours regulations.
The efforts would revoke the Working Time Regulations 1998, which currently ensure British workers have rights to paid holidays, rest breaks, and a 48-hour maximum working week.
The rights are already a watered-down version of tougher restrictions in the EU after the UK secured an ‘opt out’ to maximum hours if workers agreed.
An amendment pushed by Conservatives on the committee demands “revocation of the Working Time Regulations 1998”. The MPs explained their amendment in black and white, as “This new clause revokes the Working Time Regulations 1998 together with other Regulations which give effect to the Working Time Directive in UK law.”
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Conservatives have also suggested that new prohibitions on workplace harassment could infringe freedom of speech, pushing for an amendment that would assess the measures’ impact on the matter. The legislation would ensure that “employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.”
Conservative frontbencher Greg Smith MP said in a recent committee debate on the bill: “We must question whether the benefits of these clauses will be outweighed by the burden on employers and, in certain respects, by the chilling impact on free speech.” He said he was concerned that employers would be burdened by having to “police that which most of us…would call more innocent banter.”
Labour’s Alex McIntyre MP replied at one point: “There is already a test within the current law to avoid some of the free speech arguments the shadow Minister is making. He is seeking to trivialise the experience of many people in those industries who face unacceptable harassment in the workplace.”
Legal experts warn the move could breach the UK’s post-Brexit trade agreement with the European Union.
Speaking to Byline Times, Prof Keith Ewing, professor of public law at King’s College London, pointed out that the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement explicitly prevents either party from weakening labour protections below levels in place at the end of the Brexit transition period.
He noted it could abolish the right to paid holidays, adding: “The question for the Tories is how it is compatible with the trade and co-operation agreement with the EU which the Tories themselves negotiated to govern post Brexit relations.”
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The Conservatives’ own Brexit deal states in Article 387(2): “A Party [i.e. the UK or EU] shall not weaken or reduce, in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties, its labour and social levels of protection below the levels in place at the end of the transition period, including by failing to effectively enforce its law and standards.”
Prof Ewing added: “The purpose is to ensure that there should be no significant regression from standards derived from EU law during our membership which were in place at the time of Brexit. They need to be reminded of the commitments they made and the undertakings they undertook at the time of Brexit.”
Lord John Hendy KC, a leading employment law expert and Labour peer, told Byline Times the Conservatives “always hated” the Working Time Directive. “[They] thought Brexit would rid them of it.”
Conservative MPs are also pushing to allow companies employing fewer than 500 people to unfairly sack staff within two years.
Their move states, in their own words: “This amendment would exclude employers with fewer than 500 employees from the removal of the qualifying period for the right not to be unfairly dismissed.”
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That means at least 18 million employees – the number currently employed by small and medium sized businesses – could continue to be unfairly dismissed until two years in the same job.
Naomi Smith, chief executive of pro-EU group Best for Britain, said: “For some, Brexit has always been a race to the bottom on standards and this wouldn’t be the first time the Tories have attempted to break this international agreement which they negotiated and signed.”
She added: “The EU has led the world in enhancing workers’ rights, safety standards and environmental protections. The UK Government should at a minimum keep parity with our largest market through a policy of beneficial regulatory alignment.”
The raft of Conservative amendments, which may not be selected for a vote, also includes proposals to increase strike notice periods unions must give employers from the seven under the bill to 21 days and require cost assessments for various other worker protection measures including the new negotiating body for school support staff.
James Harrison, Director of the Institute of Employment Rights, while supporting the overall Bill, warned it already contains “many back doors and loopholes for employers to continue to exploit workers.” He cautioned against Conservative “wrecking amendments” that could create “further trapdoors in the Bill by those lobbying on behalf of unscrupulous employer interests.”
Labour’s employment rights bill is the most wide-ranging expansion of workers’ rights in the UK in at least a generation, PCS union General Secretary Fran Heathcote told a Campaign for Trade Union Freedom event last week. It will ban most zero hours contracts, give trade unions a new right to access workplaces to organise workers, and scrap the current ‘qualifying period’ to be protected from unfair dismissal.
Suspended left-wing Labour MP – currently an independent – John McDonnell is pushing to allow prison staff to strike, as part of the bill. It is unlikely to be backed by Labour.
Under the 1998 Blair-era law working time regulations, workers are entitled to 28 days of paid holiday each year, along with a paid 20-minute break for every 6-hour work period. Everyone must receive at least one complete 24-hour rest period per week, and there’s a cap limiting the average working week to 48 hours.
The rules offer a baseline minimum of protections, which can be exceeded through individual employment contracts or union agreements. Crucially, the regulations protect all workers, not just formal employees.
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