The Employment Rights Bill 2025

[rogersh]

The Employment Rights Bill 2025 extends guaranteed hours provisions to agency workers, ensuring they receive a baseline of security and predictability. This means agency workers will be entitled to an offer of guaranteed hours reflecting their regular working hours over a reference period, likely 12 weeks. The responsibility for offering guaranteed hours will fall on the end hirer, not the agency, although the agency can be held liable in certain circumstances.

Key aspects of the changes for agency workers:
Right to guaranteed hours:
Agency workers will be offered a contract that guarantees a minimum number of hours per week based on their regular hours over a 12-week reference period.

End hirer responsibility:
The end hirer (the organization hiring the agency worker) will be responsible for offering guaranteed hours, but agencies can also be held liable in some cases.

Right to reasonable notice of shifts:
Agency workers will be entitled to reasonable notice of shift schedules, and compensation if shifts are cancelled, moved, or curtailed at short notice.

Compensation for short-notice changes:
Agencies will be liable for compensating agency workers for any short-notice cancellations or curtailments, but they can potentially recoup these costs from the end hirer.

Anti-avoidance measures:
The bill includes measures to prevent employers from manipulating the guaranteed hours regime by trying to avoid triggering the requirement.

[SpacePhoenix]

Wonder if this will end up with RM going back to in-house casuals. Before Angard was created and casuals were in-house, causal contracts lasted 12 weeks, before you had two weeks with no contract, then a fresh contract started.

[rogersh]

Part of the recent negotiations following the EP group takeover includes the following point;
"The strategy to reduce reliance on agency and create new Royal Mail job opportunities"

It appears to be in the interest of RM to comply with this strategy given the changes of the bill regarding agency workers.

[Warbo]

There is an opt out.

[redlen]

How can there be an "Opt Out" with UK Primary Legislation?

The only "Opt Out" that I am aware of is with the Working Tme Regulations, but that is Primary EU Law, Not UK.

[Warbo]

Morning,
Any offer made can be rejected. More offers will be made at various review periods. It’s in there somewhere. It could be a problem if the offer is outside the individual’s shift pattern.

[MailSorter10]

I like it the way it is now. I make myself available for work when it suits me.

Wouldn't guaranteed hours force me to come to work regularly?

If Angard had to offer guaranteed hours they would have to cut number of staff. There's a lot of people coming only from time to time.

[Xeonus]

Link to the latest version of the New Deal For Workers: https://bills.parliament.uk/publication ... ments/6760.
Further reviews coming up this month which you can track at: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3737.
Click the stage currently active for more details on the previous link, for example to lead here for dates: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3737/stages/20039

Starting from chapter 2: section 27BA "Right for qualifying workers to be offered guaranteed hours" and continuing on for a few sections, you can get details about qualifying periods of consistent work requiring the company to offer a contract BUT the worker can refuse to retain agency working conditions. To be fair, there are also a few new guarantees to help agency including better compensation for shifts cancelled at short notice and requiring more time to notify the agency worker of a shift offer etc.

IDS/Royal Mail itself also agreed with CWU that if a duty has been filled by an agency worker for 13 weeks straight (not sure if they can just have the duty empty for one day to reset count to 0 days again?) then a review is created between CWU rep and manager to decide whether they advertise to fill the duty with a royal mail contract. https://www.cwu.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... y-2025.pdf

So it seems like if an agency worker refuses to accept an offer from royal mail, royal mail could fill the duty the agency worker has been on so they would lose their opportunity anyway! Think carefully about refusing an offer but make sure that the hours and details fit requirements.

[Warbo]

Heavy going trawling through this Bill. It looks like there is some way to go yet. We also see reforms extended to agency workers.
It will be interesting to see what the reference period is. Also contract length is coming up as 12 weeks so what happens then, does it reset to another reference period.
Like others I am happy with things as they stand.

[Tman]

More worryingly, dear old Angie Rayner had a hand in it..

[MailSorter10]

IDS/Royal Mail itself also agreed with CWU that if a duty has been filled by an agency worker for 13 weeks straight (not sure if they can just have the duty empty for one day to reset count to 0 days again?) then a review is created between CWU rep and manager to decide whether they advertise to fill the duty with a royal mail contract. https://www.cwu.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... y-2025.pdf

So it seems like if an agency worker refuses to accept an offer from royal mail, royal mail could fill the duty the agency worker has been on so they would lose their opportunity anyway! Think carefully about refusing an offer but make sure that the hours and details fit requirements.

There are shifts that permanent employees don't want to do, because they are poorly paid (like Sunday to Monday night). So let say, there's 8 people and only 2 of them are permies (who volunteered to do overtime). So would these 2 permies be moved between positions (at least on paper) to make it look, like agency worker is not doing it for 13 weeks non-stop.

[Xeonus]

There are shifts that permanent employees don't want to do, because they are poorly paid (like Sunday to Monday night). So let say, there's 8 people and only 2 of them are permies (who volunteered to do overtime). So would these 2 permies be moved between positions (at least on paper) to make it look, like agency worker is not doing it for 13 weeks non-stop.

To be honest, that does sound like something that could happen. No clue how this will work in practice as loopholes could be found once the 13 weeks requirement goes live.
First "regular review" seems to have a deadline of October 1st 2025 and this DOES specifically mention the shifts that most people do not want to do on talks of how to resource them for upcoming periods of time

"To ensure transparency, RODs, Divisional Reps and functional equivalents should carry out regular reviews of agency resource utilisation as part of their regular SI meetings, with the first one being complete no later than 1st October 2025. This review should make clear recommendations within the units on reducing reliance on agency, including reviewing duty structures, whilst recognising the requirement to resource difficult periods." https://www.cwu.org/wp-content/uploads/ ... y-2025.pdf found in 4.2 on page three.

[Warbo]

Afternoon,
What is the definition of a duty? Is it a specific shift or a job within a shift?
How will the scenario of multiple agency staff doing the same shift (on different days) and the same job fit in?

[Xeonus]

Afternoon,
What is the definition of a duty? Is it a specific shift or a job within a shift?
How will the scenario of multiple agency staff doing the same shift (on different days) and the same job fit in?

There are references that talk about a duty being filled by agency but does not state if it has to be the same agency worker on that specific duty. In my location, manual oversize parcel processing has been done every night for years by agency workers 95% of each weekday. So each specific role filled by anyone working counts as a potential duty advertisement/job offer. I doubt porter/ferrying/dispatch for an entire shift count as a duty since they are not pickable for a duty.

As for what is the definition of a duty? I assume it has to be the duty that OPGs pick during realignments isn't it? Quite often duties are not selected by OPGs, which may have led to some instances of Supernumeraries, or boxed off purely for agency but that is just how it like to me?

Obviously I cannot confirm anything outside of what is written in the links provided throughout this thread to direct sources, but these are just my theories based on what I have seen locally

[SpacePhoenix]

Back before Angard existed when casuals were managed in house, after 12 weeks a casual contract would be ended, they'd get a P45 and then after two weeks a new casual contract started. Maybe they'll do something similar.