The new Employment Rights Act, which was passed by the UK Parliament in December and given Royal Assent shortly thereafter, will bring many benefits to workers in all sectors across the UK.
The EIS welcomed the passing of the Employment Rights Bill and highlighted the benefits that it will bring to Scottish education, its schools and staff.
Commenting, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, “The passing of the Employment Rights Bill, which now becomes the Employment Rights Act, was a major victory for trade unions and for workers in all sectors, right across the UK.
The EIS warmly welcomes the Employment Rights Act passing into law, and believes that this will bring major benefits for Scotland’s teachers, lecturers and for the entire Scottish education system.”
Ms Bradley continued, “Key gains included within the new Employment Rights Act include the outlawing of the shameful practice of ‘fire and rehire’ which has been used by unscrupulous employers to force damaging changes to their employees’ terms and conditions.
In short, the new Employment Rights Act is a win for anyone who works in paid employment, including our teachers and lecturers.
“We have seen this used in Scottish education in recent years in the Further Education sector, where certain colleges attempted to force staff to accept pay and conditions cuts. It has also been deployed by some private schools to seek to force teaching staff onto inferior pensions – including at Craigclowan school in Perth, where teachers have been taking strike action to protect their pensions.”
Ms Bradley added, “The new Bill will also bring other significant positive changes such as improved protection from unfair dismissal, improvements to maternity and paternity leave regulation, a ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts, and the rolling-back of some of the most oppressive aspects of the previous government’s trade union restrictions.
“In short, the new Employment Rights Act is a win for anyone who works in paid employment, including our teachers and lecturers.”
Ms Bradley went on to say, “The EIS would urge all employers, and the Scottish Government, to also welcome the new Employment Rights Act, and to closely adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the new law.
One particularly welcome change for trade unions will be the removal of highly restrictive thresholds in industrial action ballots.
We have seen too many examples in the recent past of attempts to discriminate against workers or to bypass proper negotiating and collective bargaining procedures.
“The passing of the Employment Rights Act must see the end of such damaging and unacceptable behaviours.”
One particularly welcome change for trade unions will be the removal of highly restrictive thresholds in industrial action ballots. These restrictions, designed to make lawful industrial action mandates far more difficult to achieve, have hampered trade union democracy since they were introduced by the former Conservative UK government.
There is however, currently no set date for the threshold restrictions to be lifted. The EIS, and other STUC and TUC affiliated unions, are calling on the current UK government to enact the legislation to remove these thresholds without further delay.