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Do you fancy having the right to work from home or your boss being banned from bothering you on the weekend
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Well, among a number of other changes, Labor's Workers' Rights overhaul is hoping to do just that
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The new Labor government made the ambitious reforms a key part of their pitch to voters in the recent general election
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hoping to come down hard on employers that exploit or overwork their staff
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The other major changes the party also wants to introduce include a ban on forced zero-hours contract
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합 and mandating companies with over 250 staff to report annually on their ethnicity and disability pay gaps
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in the same way they currently declare their gender pay gap. As Parliament returns this week, ministers are reportedly weighing up the practicalities of the far-reaching reforms
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including how they will reprimand businesses that fall foul of them. We expect a new regulator called the Fair Work Agency to be set up and as a merger of already existing watchdogs
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which Angela Rainer, the Deputy Prime Minister, overseeing the plans, has pledged will have real teeth
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The agency expansive powers are said to include the right to issue hefty fines and bring their own prosecutions The government argues that the reforms are an important step to improving people
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dignity at work and ending exploitative practices. But a slew of business leaders have warned that the
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fines, which are expected to be in the low thousands, and the administrative burden of some of the
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reforms, are likely to be especially damaging to the UK's small businesses. This, they argue, would hamper
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economic growth and put some off hiring people in the first place. The Federation of small
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businesses was particularly concerned about the reforms to flexible working, saying that
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small businesses often can't predict staff needs that far in advance. An Enterprise Nation
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a networking group of small firms, called on small companies to be exempt from any fines for
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failure to comply. Here at City AM, we'd like to know, do you support the new government's
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changes to workers' rights? Or are you worried to that it could stifle the success of small businesses
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Let us know your thoughts in the comments
