April 30, 2015

Labour’s aims, unsurprisingly, are to improve pay and job standards with an end to the so called “race to the bottom on wages and skills”. This is what they are actually proposing:

• ensuring that zero-hours workers who work regular hours over 12 weeks are provided with a ‘regular contract’;
• raising the national minimum wage to more than £8 an hour by October 2019 (a year earlier than the Tories although not really a significant difference);
• tax rebates for businesses that commit to the living wage;
• doubling paid paternity leave from two to four weeks and increasing paternity pay to more than £260 a week;
• abolishing the ‘tribunal fee system’ (although this may not be the end of fees altogether – perhaps just a new system?);
• guaranteeing an apprenticeship to all 18-year olds with the ‘right grades’ (whatever they are?!);
• ensuring equal rights for self-employed individuals (not strictly in their manifesto but proposed at the last Labour Conference – this would certainly be interesting for media companies given the prevalence of freelancers); and
• Labour’s bit of radical/barmy… compulsory profit sharing for any businesses with more than 50 employees.

Of most interest to employers will be the changes to the tribunal fee system. There’s no doubt these have drastically reduced the number of employment claims businesses face so this is a potentially a key differentiator between the two main parties. However, with no sign of the challenges to the fee system letting up, it’s likely that we’ll be seeing some changes regardless of who ends up running the Government.