The Employment Rights Bill passed into legislation at the end of 2025. It has been presented by the Labour government and some trade union leaders as a long-overdue correction to decades of attacks on workers’ rights by previous Tory (and Labour) governments.
By Matt Hirst
Measures to restrict (but not ban) zero-hour contracts, strengthen unfair dismissal protections, curb fire-and-rehire practices, and expand sick pay should make some improvement in the lives of working-class people. However, this will only happen if they are able to be enforced through trade union struggle.
But it is equally important to be clear about what the bill does not do. A number of parts of the legislation have either been watered down from Labour’s manifesto pledges or kicked into the long grass.
Precarity not eliminated
Discussions between Labour and the various faces of big business, including the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) have clearly been a factor in pushing the government to water down the plans.
Last September, CBI Chief Executive Rain Newton-Smith said:
“By focusing on the vision and clarity behind his government’s ambitions, particularly through the Industrial Strategy, the Prime Minister is starting to sharpen our pitch for global investment whilst driving momentum on the obstacles to growth.”
This kind of language is generally code for one of two things: a driving down or freezing of wages, which increases profits, or attacks on workers’ conditions. This saves the capitalists money through reduced costs or increased profit margins as a result of higher workloads with no corresponding increase in pay.
Despite the fact that some restrictions to zero-hour contracts and fire-and-hire practices will be brought in, the loopholes of agency work, subcontracting and bogus self-employment (like with Deliveroo drivers) remain. Precarious work is not simply the result of a few bad employers – it is rooted in a system that rewards flexibility for capital and insecurity for workers.
Keir Starmer’s government has argued that better employment rights will improve productivity, reduce staff turnover and support economic growth. This framing is designed to reassure big business and investors.
For socialists, a key question is when will these changes come into force, and how can any gains they include be defended? When the profits of the capitalist class are threatened, workers’ protections are often the first to come under attack. This does not negate the value of reforms, but it does emphasise that legal improvements need to be both enforced and defended by strong workers’ organisation.
Some of the bill’s more ambitious early proposals were diluted during ‘consultation’. Flexibility for employers is a recurring theme. The outcome is a compromise: some improvements for workers, but at the same time a reassurance to the capitalist class that the government is still on their side.
This is exemplified primarily by the deafening silence on when the anti-democratic strike thresholds stop, despite their abolition being included in the bill. It is likely that the overturn of this anti-union measure will be kicked into the long grass and not be implemented.
Potential for trade unions to build
The bill includes measures that may make union organising easier in some workplaces, particularly through improved access and recognition procedures. Unions should take advantage of these changes to embark on an organising offensive – fighting to rebuild presence in sectors where they have been weaker, especially in the growing gig economy.
But these new measures still exist within an industrial relations framework that is restrictive. Legal recognition in of itself does not automatically translate into bargaining power. For socialists, this reinforces a familiar lesson – laws can open space for organising, but they cannot substitute for collective action.
Organising is crucial
The danger is not that the Employment Rights Bill goes too far, but that unions treat its legal provisions as enough for defending their members.
Marxists have always argued that lasting gains depend on organising, struggle and fighting for real democratic control over the economy. Without these, even very substantial reforms remain partial and reversible. We’ve been reminded of this with the rollback of abortion rights in the US through the overturning of Roe v. Wade, or closer to home with the long-term privatisation of the NHS.
We should defend the gains workers win, while remaining honest about their limits. The Employment Rights Bill includes some moderate measures which might make work less insecure and less arbitrary for some, and that’s important. But real security, meaning democratic control over work, time and resources, requires a deeper transformation of society.
The task is not to reject reforms, but to use them as a platform for building stronger organisation, confidence and political alternatives that go beyond the narrow limits of capitalism.
