A-Infos (en) UK, ACG, Jackdaw 26 - Employment Rights Act: We need to rely on ourselves (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The Employment Rights Act (ERA) became law last December 2025, though 
many of its provisions are still to come into force. Its proponents and 
defenders often describe it as biggest improvement to workers' rights 
for a generation - depressingly they are probably right, even if not in 
quite the way they mean. The ERA does confer improved legal benefits for 
workers, both individually and collectively, and is almost certainly 
superior to anything introduced by any government for over a quarter of 
a century. But it is highly limited, focussed on individual rather than 
collective rights and the development and enforcement of it is already 
flawed.

While in opposition the Labour Party talked up its intentions to improve 
rights for workers by "banning zero hours contracts", establishing "day 
one" employment rights for workers, to "outlaw fire and rehire", and 
more. Yet even before the 2024 General Election pressure from bosses had 
the Labour Party backtracking on some of these pledges, which were 
furthered watered down after the election as the bill went through 
parliament.

By the time the Act became law zero hour contracts were limited rather 
than banned, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims was six 
months rather than day one, "fire and rehire" had not been banned but 
had been restricted to a limited extent. In terms of collective rights 
some existing anti-trade union legislation was rolled back, the Minimum 
Service Levels Act 2023 was repealed, the mandate for legal industrial 
action after a ballot increased from six to twelve months, and the 50% 
turnout threshold for ballots for industrial action to be removed 
(although this element has not come into effect at the time of going to 
print).

In addition, in October 2025, Matthew Taylor, a former Blair adviser, 
who had worked for the May government was appointed as CEO of the Fair 
Work Agency (FWA), the agency that was created by the ERA as responsible 
for enforcing workers' rights. Taylor has announced strategic priorities 
for the FWA would include "reducing regulatory burdens". While trade 
unions bosses have made some verbal criticisms there has been little 
real fightback about the Labour Party's capitulation to employers interests.

Overall, the ERA provides a good example of how the state, parliamentary 
parties and large trade unions cannot be relied upon in the fight for 
better conditions for workers (let alone the securing of control of work 
by workers). 'Employment rights' are fundamentally nonsensical, the aim 
of the state is to support capital in exploiting workers, what rights 
workers have are this that they have forced from the state and capital 
via their own actions. While workers can, and should, look for 
opportunities that might arrive out of the ERA or other 'employment 
rights', ultimately we must rely on ourselves in the fight against 
bosses - that means organising together, joining up struggles where we 
can and looking for new opportunities to develop our class power.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/jackdaw_low-res.pdf
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