Only weeks after the Employment Rights Bill was published, an amendment paper has been brought forward. This amendment paper will help to clarify and iron out proposals in the original Bill, giving employers and HR teams greater clarity on their obligations.
Within a few short weeks of the publication of the Employment Rights Bill – which undoubtedly contains some of the most drastic proposed reforms to employment rights in a generation – a substantial amendment paper has been brought to the table.
The paper proposes a number of significant changes to the Employment Rights Bill, in addition to some far more esoteric amendments and corrections to errors in the original drafting of the Bill.
Arguably of most consequence are the following proposed changes:
- Extending the time limit for bringing all employment tribunal claims from three months to six months.
- Clarification that the statutory probationary period, which the Government has promised to introduce in order to mitigate the impact of unfair dismissal becoming a day one right, must be between three and nine months.
- Empowering the Secretary of State to specify the maximum compensatory award available when an employee has been unfairly dismissed during the statutory probationary period (which may be different to the maximum cap which currently applies in ordinary unfair dismissal cases).
- Adding menstrual problems and menstrual disorders to the definition of “matters related to gender equality”, which, under separate Regulations, employers may be required to produce equality action plans on.
With already so much within the Bill for employers and HR teams to get their heads around, these further amendments signal that there is no end in sight to the radical reforms that the government intends to introduce.
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