The government has announced that any ‘detriment’ suffered by striking workers will be prohibited under reforms in the Employment Rights Act 2025, rather than ministers creating a prescribed list of prohibited disadvantages.
The Department for Business and Trade has now published its response to the consultation it launched in February, and has chosen its preferred option of prohibiting all detriments that workers may face when they go on strike or take other forms of industrial action.
Of the 72 total responses, 57% agreed with this option, primarily respondents who were employees and trade unions. One-third (33%) of employers also agreed, but 82% of trade bodies disagreed.
It means that any detriment that a worker can be subjected to for “the sole or main purpose of penalising, preventing or deterring them from taking industrial action” will be prohibited from October 2026. The change applies to England, Scotland and Wales.
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Ministers had also sought views on whether to create a list of prohibited detriments, and what such a list would include.
The government said it is committed to ensuring workers get full protection against detriment when they take industrial action, so they can exercise their right to take industrial action without fear of repercussions.
“We believe that full protection against detriment will enable trust and stronger relations to be built between employers and workers,” said ministers.
“Responses to this consultation have shown that, of the two options, respondents feel that prohibiting all detriments and removing fear of any unfair or punitive measure is the most effective way to offer protection and build trust.”
It noted respondents’ fears that protections could be undermined if a list of prohibited detriments were created, as it would “allow bad-faith employers to exploit” detriments not prohibited by the list, adding that they might become outdated as working environments change.
Background to the law changeSection 146 of the Trade Union Labour Relations Consolidation Act 1992 (TULRCA) states that a worker has the right not to be subjected to any detriment by their employer for the purpose of penalising, preventing or deterring them from being a trade union member, taking part in trade union activities at an appropriate time, making use of trade union services, or compelling them to be a trade union member.
However, the Supreme Court found in Secretary of State for Business and Trade v Mercer in 2024 that TULRCA did not protect workers who take part in industrial action. It found this to be incompatible with Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the right to free assembly and association.
The court considered whether Ms Mercer, who was suspended for taking part in a lawful strike, was protected under section 146, focusing on the definition of “at an appropriate time”.
Because she had abandoned her shift to participate in the strike, the court found this was not “at an appropriate time”, and so section 146 did not provide protection from detriment.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 fixes this incompatibility by inserting a new section 236A into TULRCA, which states: “A worker has the right not to be subject as an individual to detriment of a prescribed description by an act, or any deliberate failure to act, by the worker’s employer, if the act or failure takes place for the sole or main purpose of preventing or deterring the worker from taking protected industrial action, or penalising the worker for doing so.”
Case law defines “detriment” broadly to mean any disadvantage, which can be as a result of an employer’s actions or inactions. Deductions from pay when someone strikes are not seen as a detriment, and the government did not propose to change this.
Whether or not an employer’s action or inaction takes place for “the sole and main purpose” of deterring or preventing industrial action, or penalising an employee for taking part, will be decided by the employment tribunal.
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After Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation as Labour Party leader, and an expectation that Andy Burnham’s will be prime minister within weeks, what would a government led by the former mayor of Manchester mean for employers?
With Wes Streeting now backing Andy Burnham, and only a slim possibility that any other Labour MP would garner the backing of 81 colleagues to challenge him, the “King of the North” could be in Number 10 by 17 July.
Can Burnham create the conditions needed by business to drive growth while addressing the tax and spending challenges? Or will his appointment as PM – the UK’s seventh PM in a decade – just create further uncertainty and inertia?
Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), said: “More change in Whitehall could be a challenge to the stability firms need, but business are adept at getting on with it. Whoever is prime minister, one thing will remain true though: only private sector growth can address the fiscal challenges the government faces and put money in the pockets of people across the country.
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“What firms really need is a government that will back them to deliver growth, rather than making trading more difficult by heaping up ever more regulatory and taxation costs.
“That means making sure that government works with business to achieve its aims, rather than imposing solutions that sound good to Westminster think-tanks and more radical union leaders, but do not help ordinary workers and companies who are trying to drive the country forward.”
Burnham has already committed a future government to the current administration’s fiscal rules, allaying some fears that he could spook foreign investors by borrowing more.
He will set out his plans for economic growth next week, but he is already facing calls for him to balance better Labour’s commitment to strengthen workers’ rights with the need to preserve the flexibility that has long characterised the labour market, flexibility that is currently the focus of a consultation on regulations for guaranteed hours.
Carberry said: “Pragmatism on the unworkable approach to guaranteed hours set out by the Employment Rights Act would be a good first step in working out whether any new Prime Minister really has growth and prosperity at the heart of their plan.”
Angela Rayner, previously deputy prime minister, and the lead architect of Labour’s reforms to “Make Work Pay”, was a vocal opponent to Starmer’s decision to block Burnham from running in the Gorton & Denton by-election.
She is likely to return to Burnham’s cabinet, joining Jonathan Reynolds, another pioneer of the Employment Rights Act, who has been tipped to return to his former role as business and trade secretary.
Both are unlikely to water down the government’s zero-hours reforms, particularly in the face of pressure from the trade unions.
Shifting wealth and powerAndrea Egan, Unison’s general secretary, said: “The next prime minister has an opportunity to break with tinkering around the edges and deliver a complete transformation of this country, permanently shifting wealth and power to working-class people.
“That means full implementation of the plan to Make Work Pay, a massive programme of public investment and insourcing to repair our public services, and national public ownership of utilities.”
Rain Newton-Smith, CBI chief executive, said: “With geopolitical tensions high, the country now needs stability, confidence and a clear path to growth. The UK’s economic challenges will not disappear with a change of prime minister. The economy won’t fix itself while politicians look inwards. And you cannot tackle the cost-of-living without addressing the cost of doing business.”
She added: “Business will want their voice to be heard and for the needs of our economy, the ability to invest and create jobs throughout the UK, to be at the forefront of any decisions. It’s a competitive game to capture global investment and one in which the UK needs to stay ahead.
“We look forward to working with the government on the transition and with the next prime minister, who must move quickly to reassure businesses and investors, protect living standards, and set out a credible, deliverable plan for growth.”
NationalisationWhile Starmer was considering his future at Chequers over the weekend, allies of Burnham published The Productive State: A Framework for Manchesterism, a policy paper outlining an economic approach for Burnham to scale up nationally what he has achieved in Manchester.
It examines how public control can be reasserted through direct engagement in public investment, provision, ownership and coordination. It criticises the long trend of privatisation of utilities, saying this is at the heart of the UK’s growth and productivity struggles, since loss of control over the basics has made life more expensive.
The publication does not, however, advocate for blanket nationalisation but argues for a framework for greater state intervention to protect the public from soaring costs.
Tax and NICsIn his Makerfield campaign, while wishing to focus on local politics rather than national policy, Burnham did say he would consider cutting some employers’ national insurance contributions and cutting business rates for pubs and small businesses.
In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight, Burnham said: “I have said that I thought the weight of the burden on employers’ national insurance wasn’t the right decision. However, it was the decision.
“There is more that needs to be done to listen to the voice of small business, and as I’ve gone around this constituency, I’m hearing it a lot. People just feel they are at the kind of limits of what they can do.”
Whether this thinking could also apply to bigger businesses remains to be seen. The only thing we know for sure is that Starmer’s leadership is over. While the Conservatives and Reform UK call for a general election, employers will once again adapt to yet another period of relative instability.
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Four in 10 employers provide no training. Rather than blaming universities for not producing work-ready graduates, should businesses reconsider their own role in skilling up the workforce, asks Dr Fadime Sahin?
As universities face relentless pressure over graduate employability, the government’s own data tells a different and more troubling story: employer investment in workplace development has been declining for a decade.
The critique of British universities has become almost ritualistic. Graduates lack workplace readiness. Curricula are outdated. The graduate earnings premium is shrinking. Higher education, the argument goes, is failing to produce the workers the economy needs.
Some of this criticism has merit. Universities can be slow to update curricula and modernise their courses or prioritise research prestige over teaching quality. These are problems worth addressing.
Yet, the shrinking graduate earnings premium is found specifically to be a British problem, one that the Financial Times has traced to weak productivity and insufficient skilled job creation.
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The premium reflects the economy’s capacity to absorb educated workers as much as it reflects what universities produce.
But there is a different question, less frequently asked: what has happened to the employer side of the equation?
If Britain has a skills crisis, how much of it reflects a shortage of skilled workers and how much reflects a decade-long retreat by employers from training them?
The evidence, documented by the UK government’s own Employer Skills Survey, with a study of more than 22,000 employers published by the Department for Education in 2024, is striking.
Reduced investmentTotal employer training expenditure has fallen from £62.1 billion in 2015 to £53 billion in 2024 in real terms.
That is a 15% decline in investment in workforce development over a period in which the broader economy grew. Training spend per employee fell by 24%, from £2,240 to £1,700.
The number of training days per employee has dropped to 3.6 per year, its lowest point in the survey’s history. Training days per trainee fell from 6.8 in 2015 to 5.7 in 2024.
Most significantly, 41% of UK employers now provide no training at all. That figure has risen sharply from roughly one in three employers offered a decade ago. Today, it is closer to one in two.
The apprenticeship data is equally difficult to explain away. Only around one in five employers offer apprenticeships. Just 11% have current apprentices.
For decades, governments have assumed that employers would invest in skills if the supply of graduates improved
A further 8% offer apprenticeship schemes, but have no apprentices currently. The apprenticeship levy – now known as the growth and skills levy – was introduced precisely to reverse this trend.
Instead, this has coincided with a 23% fall in training spend per employee since 2017. Fewer employers now plan to offer apprenticeships than at any point since the scheme began.
Work placements follow the same pattern. Only a third of employers offered any form of placement, down from 38% in 2016.
One in ten offered placements specifically for adults seeking to enter the workforce. Only a quarter hosted placements for learners in education.
Here is the contradiction at the heart of these figures: when employers are asked what they value most in new recruits, the majority place relevant work experience at the top.
Experience is the decisive criterion. It is also the thing labour markets increasingly fail to provide through placements, apprenticeships or early-career development.
Structural shiftBritain’s employer-driven, market-led approach to the training system is not new, and none of it is solely a product of recent economic shocks or evolving developments in AI.
UK firms historically leaned towards “buying” skills rather than “building” them, relying on external hiring and subcontracting rather than developing strong internal training systems.
Compared with the US, Germany or Japan, the UK developed weaker institutions and internal development systems for employer-led workforce development. The current figures reflect the deepening of a long-standing structural tendency, not a sudden reversal.
International comparisons remove any remaining ambiguity. UK employers invest roughly half as much per employee as the EU average, according to the think tank IPPR, offering shorter, cheaper and less substantial training than their European counterparts.
For decades, governments have assumed that employers would invest in skills if the supply of graduates improved.
Yet the evidence shows the opposite: policy has consistently rewarded external hiring over internal development, made it cheaper to poach than to train, and built no coherent national system of employer-led training.
Long-term withdrawalThe skills levy is the most recent example of a policy designed to raise employer investment in skills that has instead, in the period since its introduction, coincided with a sustained decline.
Some of the retreat reflects genuine constraint. Tight margins, volatile markets and short planning horizons make long-term investment harder to justify, particularly for small businesses.
The latest Employer Skills Survey shows that the sharpest recent fall in total training expenditure came from the smallest employers (between two and four employees), whose spend dropped by 18%, in real terms, between 2022 and 2024. These pressures are real and should not be dismissed.
But this is not simply a story of squeezed SMEs. Long-run data from the government’s Investment in Training series, analysed by the Learning and Work Institute, shows that large firms have cut training spend per employee more steeply than any other group, down by around one-third.
And although large employers remain the most likely to offer apprenticeships, their future plans to do so have fallen, from 38% in 2022 to 31% in 2024.
The long-term withdrawal from workforce development is therefore not only confined to small firms under pressure. It is a structural shift across the employer landscape, including those best placed to invest.
Broken relationshipFor much of the post-war period, the relationship between employers and workers operated on a recognisable, if imperfect, logic.
The state educated, businesses trained, and workers progressed. That arrangement was not universal; it excluded parts of the workforce, including women and minority communities. But it provided a framework within which skills were developed inside firms.
This social contract, including long-term careers, employer-funded training and progression, has been increasingly weakened. Over time, market pressures, outsourcing and shareholder-driven models contributed to the erosion of employer-led training and long-term workforce development.
Businesses have arguably externalised a significant share of workforce development onto the state, universities and individuals, reflecting a division of labour between public institutions and private ones.
Over time, market pressures, outsourcing and shareholder-driven models contributed to the erosion of employer-led training and long-term workforce development
The graduate workforce has expanded substantially. In exchange for this prior investment, businesses offered wages, structured experience and investment in people’s skills and development.
Learning and Work Institute analysis also found that graduates were three times more likely to get training at work than non-graduates, suggesting that the labour market itself compounds educational disadvantage.
It is not just that non-graduates earn less. They are also excluded from the employer investment that could close the gap.
Universities are increasingly expected to compensate for the shrinking role of employers in skills formation, but that expectation only reaches those who attended one, and even then, a degree no longer guarantees the structured development that employers themselves have quietly stopped providing.
Universities should evolve. Curricula should improve. But no amount of curriculum reform can compensate for a labour market that expects fully formed workers while investing less and less in forming them.
The skills crisis is not simply a shortage of skilled workers. It is also what happens when an economy decides, over decades, that training is someone else’s problem.
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Picture this. It’s your colleague’s last day. There’s a brief shoutout in the team meeting, a Slack message with a few reactions and, then, they’re gone. In a parallel universe, another colleague leaves with a GroupTogether card signed by every person they’ve ever worked with – an outpouring of personal messages, memories and photos waiting in their inbox. Two exits. Two vastly different signals sent to the employees who stay.
Here’s what human resource leaders often overlook about the farewell: the person leaving isn’t the only audience. The team is, too. How an organisation treats people on their way out is one of the most visible demonstrations of its values. The other employees draw conclusions about what their own work is worth to the organisation they’re showing up for.
The problem is that pulling off a great farewell is never a quick job and hybrid work has made it worse. A physical greeting card usually spends three days on someone’s desk before anyone remembers it. The remote colleagues never get included. And there’s a frantic email at 4pm on someone’s last day, asking “has everyone signed the card??”
Co-Founders Ali Linz and Julie Tylman built GroupTogether to solve this problem. In 2015, the two Australian co-founders wanted a simpler way to bring people together around the moments that matter. Whether it’s a farewell card or a birthday surprise, GroupTogether makes creating group cards effortless – even when the team isn’t in the same room.
“Our goal from the beginning was to make celebrating any occasion gracious and meaningful for the recipient and effortless for the organiser. You can just come to GroupTogether, click start, and within minutes your entire team – wherever they’re based – has been invited to sign the card,” Tylman said.
By 2023, GroupTogether had expanded to the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada; it’s now trusted by more than 13,000 companies worldwide.
HR teams love how effortless and collaborative GroupTogether makes celebrating as a team. Cards allow unlimited messages, and anyone can sign – colleagues, managers, clients, even contacts outside the organisation – so there’s no awkward rationing of who gets to sign. There’s also no company subscription, no IT setup and no hidden upgrades.
For the recipient, opening a GroupTogether card feels like a moment. Their name appears embossed on a digital envelope right in their inbox. Inside, they’ll find messages, photos and GIFs from the whole team waiting for them. Card covers can be pulled from a curated library, or dreamed up on the spot with GroupTogether’s AI magic card cover tool, which generates unlimited unique designs from a simple prompt.
“We’ve had people email us saying they ugly cried at their desk reading their card,” Linz said. “That reaction tells you something. These aren’t just nice moments. They’re the moments when people genuinely feel appreciated. And the whole team sees that happening.”
According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report, Europe has the lowest employee engagement of any region in the world. Just 12% of European workers feel engaged at work; the vast majority (73%) are not engaged, and 15% are actively disengaged. That figure has barely shifted in over a decade.
One throughline in Gallup’s findings is the relationship between recognition and engagement. Employees are more engaged when they feel their work is genuinely valued. A well-executed farewell is one of the most tangible expressions of an organisation’s appreciation for its employees. A perfunctory one sends the opposite signal.
The paradox is that most organisations invest considerably in onboarding, with first impressions, structured induction programmes and welcome processes designed to make new starters feel valued from day one. Yet the same organisations often don’t give as much consideration to how people leave.
A new starter walks in as a blank slate. A departing colleague is someone the team knows, has worked alongside, has covered for and has laughed with. When that person is properly celebrated on their way out, the message to everyone remaining is clear: this organisation recognises what effort and loyalty look like. When they’re not, that message is equally clear.
Recognition is often discussed as a transaction between giver and recipient. But in a workplace context, it’s also a public act. When a team comes together to mark a colleague’s departure properly, everyone who contributed is also making a statement about the kind of organisation they belong to. When you’re flicking through forty messages on a farewell card, remote employees included alongside in-office ones, you get a strong sense of real connection.
“‘Do I matter here? Do people actually like me? Am I valued?’ They’re questions most of us carry around, whether we admit it or not,” says Linz. “That’s why a farewell card filled with messages or a birthday card signed by your whole team can mean so much. What looks like a small gesture is often something much deeper: reassurance that you’ve had an impact and that people care.”
That sense of connection has value well beyond the farewell itself. It reinforces something that no benefits package or town hall can manufacture: the feeling that this is a place where effort is noticed, where people are more than their job titles, and where the human stuff is taken seriously.
The farewell is one of the highest-visibility moments in an employee’s lifecycle – for the leaver, yes, but just as much for the team that remains. GroupTogether gives HR teams the simplest possible way to get it right: a group farewell card live in minutes, signed by everyone from the CEO to the colleague three time zones away, delivered with an experience that tells the recipient that this organisation takes its people seriously.
That’s a small investment. The signal it sends is anything but.
Learn more about GroupTogether
GroupTogether is the easiest way to create a group card online. Perfect for birthdays, work anniversaries, retirements, office farewells or babies. Loved by over 1 million users.
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Employers are preparing for a four-day extreme heat warning across much of the UK this week, as temperatures could soar to up to 40°C.
The Met Office has today issued a rare red weather warning – the highest level of alert – for parts of southern England and Wales as temperatures rise to record levels.
The red warning is in place between 9:00am on Wednesday 24 June and 9:00pm on Thursday 25 June.
The Met Office had already put an amber weather warning in place until 11:59pm on Thursday, 25 June, encompassing large swathes of England and Wales. More northerly regions are only under this warning for Wednesday and Thursday.
It said that the current highest temperature on record for June could be broken, which is 35.6°C and was set in 1976.
Deputy chief forecaster Tom Crabtree said: “The combination of heat and humidity will be oppressive and bring impacts across society from public health and infrastructure, to power and water supplies.”
He added that consecutive warm nights that do not drop below 20°C will make it harder for people to recover from the daytime heat, exacerbating these impacts.
The extreme temperatures will lead many employees to question whether it is legally “too hot to work” or to ask for flexible arrangements such as earlier starts.
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There is no legal maximum working temperature in the UK, unlike other countries such as Spain, where the maximum legal indoor working temperature for sedentary work is 27°C and 25°C for light physical work.
Instead, employers are obliged under health and safety legislation to provide a temperature that is “reasonable”.
In May, the Climate Change Committee advised the UK government that a maximum legal temperature range could help employers protect workers’ safety.
Unions have also campaigned for greater regulation around maximum working temperatures, and the TUC introduced workplace inspections for heat safety.
In response to high temperature forecasts, workplace conciliation service Acas made recommendations for employers on how to manage the challenges presented by the heatwave.
“Some workers with certain health conditions or disabilities may be adversely affected by the heat. The hotter weather can also impact public transport, which can disrupt people’s journeys to and from work,” said chief executive Niall Mackenzie.
“Acas has some top tips for employers to help ensure their businesses remain productive during the heatwave while keeping staff happy, too.”
Employers’ legal “duty of care” to their staff includes not only reasonable working temperatures in their place of work, but also when working from home.
At work, this could include providing employees with suitable drinking water or extra breaks so staff can get cold drinks, Acas added. Further measures could include relaxing uniform or dress code requirements.
For vulnerable staff, employers should assess risks and try to reduce or remove these, for example by providing fans, air-cooling units or more frequent breaks.
Risk of accidentsJoshua Hughes, partner and head of the complex injury team at Bolt Burdon Kemp, warned that exceptional temperatures could impair concentration and raise the likelihood of workplace accidents.
“Exceptional temperatures like those we are currently seeing across London and much of England are more than simply uncomfortable – they can create genuinely dangerous working conditions,” he said.
“Despite growing calls for action, whilst there is no upper legal limit for workplace temperatures in the UK, employers still have a clear duty to provide a safe working environment and to properly assess risks posed by extreme heat.”
Bus and train drivers in London could be working in temperatures as high as 40C, he added, alongside warnings of disruption across the transport network as the infrastructure struggles to cope.
“Many of the workplace injury cases we handle arise because employers have failed to take reasonable steps to protect staff from foreseeable risks,” said Hughes.
“As periods of extreme heat become increasingly common in the UK, businesses must ensure that heat-related risks are treated as a serious health and safety issue rather than simply an inconvenience.”
Employee detrimentPatrick Macken, a solicitor at Richard Nelson LLP, said that employees could have recourse to the Employment Rights Act 1996 if they are subject to detriment because they left the workplace due to “serious and imminent danger”.
“While that sounds like a high threshold, the danger doesn’t need to be life-threatening; it includes exposure to harm, injury, or risk. Even the risk of danger is enough to trigger statutory protection,” he said.
Detriment in this context could mean disciplinary action, for example, or anything that “a reasonable employee could perceive as placing them at a disadvantage”.
Macken advised: “While each case is subject to its own merits, employers ought to be mindful of health and safety measures, and avoid knee-jerk decisions to discipline or dismiss employees who take preventative measures, such as adjusting their uniform or opening doors, to stay safe in the heat.”
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Car manufacturer BMW is reported to be in talks with staff representatives as it prepares to cut up to 5% of its workforce.
The German company issued a profit warning last week saying that “structural and efficiency measures are being intensified” to respond to market forces, including the impact of conflict in the Middle East and weakening demand in China.
According to Reuters, around 7,700 positions are expected to be removed through natural attrition, including retirement, voluntary resignation and other forms of employee turnover.
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“We have strong product momentum: With the Neue Klasse, we will put the strongest BMW portfolio in history on the roads over the next two years,” said Milan Nedeljković, chairman of the board of management of BMW AG.
“At the same time, we will adapt our current structures and processes to the drastic downturn in market conditions. It is our entrepreneurial responsibility, therefore, to significantly intensify and accelerate our ongoing measures. It’s all about speed and efficiency.”
The 5% workforce reduction is expected to happen by the end of this year. The company said efficiency measures would have a “one-time negative impact on earnings in the second half of 2026”.
A works council spokesperson told Reuters: “We are initially working on viable solutions, through dialogue and with a sense of responsibility toward our employees.”
Fellow carmaker Volkswagen recently announced plans to cut 35,000 jobs in Germany by 2030, and around 20,000 of these roles have already been agreed through voluntary redundancy.
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Thursday 25 June 2026, 2:00pm BST
Most companies treat engagement and performance as separate ideas, but that’s a mistake. To succeed over time, employees need to feel both connected to their work and confident that the company will do well.
Sustainable high performance needs an engaging culture and performance confidence. Measure those two and you get a clear, forward‑looking read on whether your culture will deliver results.
This Personnel Today webinar, in association with Culture Amp, examines the people and culture platform’s research from more than 1,800 global companies, as it introduces its Performance Culture Quadrant, a data-backed framework that transforms insights into a strategy for success.
Editor Rob Moss is joined by Sarah Muljiani, senior people scientist at Culture Amp, who will show you a simple way to measure engagement and performance confidence, identify where you are today and take practical steps to move your culture forward.
Register now to learn about:
The ROI of Peak Performance and the psychological link between culture and performance Practical, people science-backed strategies to propel your organisation onto a path to sustainable high performance The Performance Culture Diagnostic, a new tool designed to pinpoint the state of your workplace culture and bridge the gap between engagement and performance.This free 60-minute webinar includes an in-depth presentation on Culture Amp’s global data insights and an audience Q&A.
Reserve your place on the webinar now
About our speaker
Sarah Muljiani is a senior people scientist for Culture Amp in the EMEA region, with a strong focus on Middle East & Benelux customers. She has a BSc in Psychology from University of Birmingham and an MSc in Industrial/Organisational and Business Psychology from University College London. In her role, Sarah partners with customers in collecting, understanding, and taking action on employee feedback through industry best practice and applied I/O psychology concepts. Prior to Culture Amp, she has worked in a professional services firm and a Canadian-based Pension Fund specialising in all things HR, Talent Management, Engagement, Assessment and Selection across a range of industries in Dubai, and more recently in London. Sarah’s main areas of interest include Employee Wellbeing, Leadership Development, People Consulting and Mental Health.
This webinar was originally planned for 21 May 2026 and has been rescheduled
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Employment lawyers have said that the government’s consultation on reforms to zero-hours contracts and agency worker protections could provide the clearest indication yet of how an Andy Burnham-led government may approach employment law and labour market regulation.
The comments come in the wake of Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election. The Greater Manchester mayor is widely expected to challenge Sir Keir Starmer over the leadership of the Labour party.
According to employment specialists at Constantine Law, a Burnham-led government may signal a more “interventionist” approach to workplace regulation than Starmer. However, this is countered by the fact that he has sought out advice from Andy Haldane, a former Bank of England chief economist; Richard Hughes, a former chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility; and Jim O’Neill, a crossbench peer and former Treasury minister who worked on George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse.
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Constantine Law argues that one of the key challenges facing any future administration would be balancing Labour’s commitment to strengthening workers’ rights with the need to promote economic growth and preserve the flexibility that has long characterised the UK labour market.
Zero hoursIt said the most consequential reforms may be around zero hours, which are under consultation until 25 August.
This includes proposals that could reshape workforce flexibility across a range of sectors, including healthcare, retail, hospitality, logistics, and agriculture, including agency work.
The decisions taken on zero-hours reform will tell employers a great deal about the direction of travel under any future Burnham administration” – John Hayes, Constantine Law
John Hayes, managing partner at Constantine Law, said the consultation represented an important test of the government’s policy direction.
“The decisions taken on zero-hours reform will tell employers a great deal about the direction of travel under any future Burnham administration,” he said. “The consultation presents a series of choices that could either preserve labour market flexibility or impose substantial new obligations on employers.”
Issues under consideration include the length of reference periods used to calculate guaranteed hours, eligibility criteria for guaranteed-hours offers, minimum notice periods for shifts, and compensation arrangements when shifts are cancelled or changed at short notice.
Flexibility is keyHayes argued that labour market flexibility has historically been one of the UK’s economic strengths, helping to maintain lower levels of youth unemployment than many European countries.
He added that concerns about rising numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) highlighted the importance of maintaining routes into work.
“The interests of employers and workers are often more aligned than political debates suggest,” Hayes said. “Policymakers must be careful not to undermine those opportunities.”
Vital changesThe government says the zero-hours reforms will end one-sided flexibility and help people plan their finances and daily lives. Those who enjoy the benefits of zero-hour work may keep their existing contracts if they wish.
Ministers maintain that the reforms would help save workers in some of the most deprived areas up to £600 in lost income from the hidden costs of insecure work.
Business secretary Peter Kyle said: “It’s not right that people can work regular hours but still have no certainty about their pay from week to week. These vital changes will mean more certainty for millions of people and will save the lowest-paid workers hundreds of pounds.”
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Probation officers’ excessive workloads are putting the public ‘at direct risk’, according to Napo, the trade union that represents probation and family court staff.
According to union officials, members say they are unable to cope with the growing number of ex-offenders they are being asked to supervise, and could be set to launch strike action.
Last year, an investigation by the National Audit Office found that the Probation Service was “under significant strain” since it returned to full public ownership in 2021.
Staff shortages and skills gaps were major factors in poor performance, the NAO found, with probationers adequately assessing risk of harm in just 28% of cases.
Probation ServiceStaffing issues undermining work of the Probation Service
Unions urge action on ‘unmanageable’ Probation Service
From September, the government is planning to expand its use of tagging for ex-offenders so that up to 40,000 individuals will be monitored by tags and overseen by probation officers. This means a 40% increase in monitoring cases for staff.
Tania Bassett, Napo national official, said: “Excessive workloads and staff burnout poses a direct risk to the public, with staff being unable to effectively manage the risk of their clients in the community.
“Added to this is the shortage of accommodation, which will result in more people being homeless and therefore more likely to reoffend.”
She added that managers were discussing removing a workload measurement tool that would show the level of tasks officers were dealing with, putting them at further risk.
The Ministry of Justice announced plans in March to recruit 1,300 extra probation officers as part of a £700 million investment up to 2029.
The Guardian reports that the union’s executive has voted for a motion that “the current position is untenable and cannot continue”.
The executive claims that HM Prison and Probation Service leadership has “demonstrably failed in its duty of care to the workforce of the Probation Service, and this represents a reckless disregard for our welfare and professional integrity as well as the safety of our communities”.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told the newspaper: “We remain committed to working closely with trade unions to ensure our staff continue to get the support they need to cut crime and protect the public.
“We have full confidence in Probation Service leadership to deliver the necessary changes and improvements.”
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