King's Speech: Stronger workers’ rights can underpin better work in left-behind UK regions

“The King’s Speech 2024 commits to legislating for an Employment Rights Bill, reflecting promises in Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay. Cumulatively, the range of new regulations will constitute a major increase in workers’ rights after 14 years of Conservative government espousal of a liberalized flexible labour market model. This low wage-low investment-low productivity model has created large numbers of low-quality insecure jobs.

A new policy direction and associated new regulations are required based on the concept of imposing ‘beneficial constraints’ on employers to compel them to create better quality jobs, and to support and protect good employment relations.

The Labour Government commitments on workers’ rights can potentially help to underpin better, more productive, work in left-behind UK regions. Nonetheless, there are concerns that the policy measures are not as far-reaching as an earlier iteration in an Employment Rights Green Paper and might be further diluted to appease business lobbyists. For instance, initial promises to establish Fair Pay Agreements across the economy are now confined to starting by consulting on a new Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector.”