Abstract Focusing on the collective and trade union rights contained in Part 4 of the Employment Rights Act, this article assesses the changes that were eventually introduced against the policy proposals and commitments that preceded them. It begins by sketching the law in force prior to the passing of the Act, employing the concept of the ‘labour constitution’, which is defined here, in essence, as the body of collective labour laws in force at a given point in time. In a second section, the policy statements of the Labour Party under Keir Starmer’s leadership are reviewed and compared with those of previous Governments of the 21st century. In the third and longest section, the provisions of Part 4 of the Act are analysed and omissions identified. On the basis of the foregoing analysis, the article concludes that the Act makes important changes to the existing law on collective rights but falls short of the Government’s policy commitments in several respects. While the enacted reforms may indeed represent the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation, they do not alter the fundamental characteristics of the neoliberal labour constitution in force in this country since the 1980s.
Ruth Dukes (Sun,) studied this question.