THE
EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS BILL
The
Employment
Relations Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 2 December 2003.
This page summarises what is contained in the Bill. The
Explanatory Notes explain the effect of clauses in the Bill.
The Employment Relations Bill is mainly concerned
with collective labour law and trade union rights.
It will implement the findings of the review of the Employment
Relations Act 1999, announced by the
Secretary of State in July 2002. The
centrepiece of the 1999 Act was the establishment of a statutory procedure for
the recognition of trade unions by employers for collective bargaining purposes.
The
review concluded that the 1999 Act is generally working well.
However, the review identified a number of areas where recognition
procedures could be improved and trade union law modernised.
The
review was conducted with close involvement of interested parties, and included
a full public consultation on its draft conclusions and recommendations.
The Government’s
response 
(180Kb)
to that consultation
exercise sets out the findings of the review and gives a detailed analysis of
the policy behind the measures in the Bill.
What’s
in the Bill?
The
Bill contains:
- measures
to improve the operation of the statutory recognition procedure.
For example, it clarifies issues surrounding the determination of the
appropriate bargaining unit; clarifies the “topics”
for collective bargaining; allows unions to communicate with workers at an
earlier stage in the process, and clarifies and builds upon the current
legislation relating to the supply of information to the Central
Arbitration Committee and the Advisory
Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas);
- measures
to simplify the law on industrial action ballots and ballot notices; and
provisions to increase the protections against the dismissal of employees
taking official and lawfully-organised industrial action by exempting
"lock-out" days form the 8-week protected period;
- measures
to implement the European Court of Human Rights judgment in the case of Wilson
& Palmer, which ensure that union
members have clear rights to use their union's services, and cannot be
bribed by employers to relinquish essential union rights;
- measures
to improve the operation of some individual employment rights such as a
clarification of the role of the companion in grievance and disciplinary
hearings; and a technical change to flexible working legislation
concerning protections from unfair dismissal;
- a
power to make regulations to introduce information and consultation in the
workplace, by implementing the EC
Directive on Information and Consultation (Council Directive 2002/14/EC)
(52Kb).The Government consultation
(238Kb)
on the draft regulations closed on 7
November 2003, and a response is expected to be published early in 2004;
- measures
to improve the enforcement regime of the national minimum wage.
The Government published a consultation
note
(17Kb)
in August 2003, and the
response
is now available;
- measures
to give the Certification Officer
greater powers to strike out weak or vexatious claims;
- measures
to improve trade union regulation, and a power to allow the Secretary of
State to include non-postal methods of balloting in statutory union
elections and ballots;
The
Government will also bring forward measures in the Bill to widen the ability
of unions to expel or exclude racist activists and others whose political
behaviour is incompatible with trade union membership.
The
Government has also announced it will bring forward amendments to the Bill
regarding the protection of strikers against dismissal, which will define
more closely the actions which employers and unions should undertake when
taking reasonable procedural steps to resolve industrial disputes.
If you have any enquiries
please telephone 020 7215 5000.
*A welsh language version of the
Regulatory Impact Assessment and the Government’s response to the review of
the Employment Relations Act 1999 will be available shortly.
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