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Unions have warned workers’ rights are at risk after the government unveiled new plans to scrap EU working hours rules as part of its push to cut unnecessary red tape.
The announcement comes as a proposal to scrap up to 4,000 EU-era regulations by the end of the year was dropped after a private meeting with Brexiteer MPs.
Ministers on Wednesday unveiled a set of regulatory reforms in the successful EU bill, which they say will help businesses cut costs.
The package included reducing time-consuming and disproportionate reporting requirements for specific elements of the Working Time Regulations, the part of UK law that implements key EU labor regulations and rights.
But Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Council (TUC), seized on the government’s stated aims, calling them a gift to rogue employers seeking to exploit workers and put them through long, grueling shifts without enough support. rest.
On changes to holiday pay, which will see it calculated in a different way to current EU law, he added: Current law ensures that most leave is paid in line with workers’ normal earnings, including including regular overtime. Ministers should not get involved in this.
Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said the government would retain the 48-hour requirement of the EU Working Time Directive and otherwise meet the UK’s leading employment standards.
His decision not to scrap thousands of EU-era regulations by the end of the year has met with opprobrium from Tories, with former Brexit minister Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeting: Sadly the Prime Minister has shredded its own promise rather than EU laws.
Rees-Mogg later said in a statement that this amounted to an admission of administrative failure. He denounced an inability in Whitehall to do the necessary work and an inability of ministers to push this through their own departments.
Badenoch previously described changes to a supposed bonfire of EU legislation, which originally meant that thousands of laws would automatically face the ax on December 31 under a controversial end-of-life clause. delay.
An amendment now clarifies which regulations will be removed from the UK compendium of laws, instead of highlighting only retained European laws which would be saved, she said.
The move, described by Labor as a humiliating reversal, marks the abandonment of the year-end deadline that experts had warned was totally unrealistic.
Badenoch said the government would instead make improvements to labor law, which could help save businesses around €1 billion a year, while protecting workers’ rights.
There would be consultations on recording working hours and ways to streamline engagement with workers when a business is transferred to new owners.
Other new plans include promoting competition and productivity in the workplace by limiting the duration of so-called non-competition clauses to three months.
The government said it would provide more flexibility for up to five million British workers to join a competitor or start a rival business after leaving a job.