The Employment Rights Act 2025
The biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation

Labour’s Manifesto made a clear promise to voters, with a commitment to “implementing ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering a New Deal for Working People’ in full”. This is a promise that needs to be kept.

Drawn up in partnership with Labour’s affiliated trade unions, the New Deal is a comprehensive plan to improve the lives of working people by strengthening individual and collective rights – raising wages and improving working conditions. If delivered in full, it will be the biggest uplift in employment rights in a generation.

The Employment Rights Act becoming law marks is a huge leap forward for workers’ rights and is the first, big step in delivering the New Deal for Working People.

The Act is set to be implemented over the course of 2026 and 2027, with many of the details as to how these changes will work in practice yet to be decided in secondary legislation. Unions are clear that how the Act is implemented will determine whether or not it works in practice in our workplaces.