Key takeaways
Agency workers to gain shift protections
New rules extend rights to guaranteed hours.
Notice and cancellation rules clarified
Agencies and hirers must give fair warning.
Short-notice shift pay enforceable
Agencies must compensate with recoup options
Employment Rights Bill: provisions re zero and low hours workers will be extended to agency workers
The Employment Rights Bill (ERB), which is currently progressing through Parliament, contains provisions that are designed to protect zero and low hours workers by giving them new rights to:
guaranteed hours, where the number of hours offered reflects the hours regularly worked by the worker during a reference period; and
reasonable notice of shifts and a right to payment for shifts cancelled or curtailed at short notice.
The Department for Business and Trade has recently published its response to its 2024 public consultation on whether to extend these provisions to agency workers. The response confirms it will proceed and will amend the ERB to extend the above protections for zero and low hours workers to agency workers. The response confirms:
Guaranteed hours offers
The obligation to offer guaranteed hours to a qualifying agency worker will be placed on end-users.
Seasonal work/temporary contracts
Businesses will be able to offer temporary contracts and avoid the need to make a guaranteed hours offer where there is a genuine temporary work need (which will be clarified in subsequent regulations).
Reasonable notice of shifts and changes/cancellations
Responsibility for providing an agency worker with reasonable notice of shifts, including any changes/cancellations will be placed on both the employment agency and the end-hirer. Short notice will be reasonable in some situations (to be clarified in regulations). End hirers and agencies will be free to agree how the hirer should notify the agency of available shifts or changes to these shifts. However, regulations will specify when and how agency workers should receive notice of shifts, and any changes, curtailments or cancellations. What is considered ‘reasonable’ notice will depend on the circumstances and a range of factors (precise details of those circumstances/factors will be clarified by regulations).
Payments for short-notice shift changes
Regulations will govern key aspects of the agency worker’s right to payments for short-notice cancellation, curtailment and movement of shifts. Employment agencies will have responsibility to pay these payments to eligible agency workers, but the agency and end-user will be able to negotiate and agree recoupment provisions in their contractual arrangements. The legislation will include a failsafe, for contracts signed before two months from the Bill receiving Royal Assent, allowing the agency to recoup from the hirer that proportion of the payments which the hirer is responsible for.
Transfer fees/extended hire periods
There will be no changes to the current employment agency conduct provisions which deal with transfer fees/extended hire periods.