Burnham must see the Employment Rights Act through – and not be nervous about it
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester on Day One of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, September 2025 (Milo Chandler/Alamy Live News)
4 min read
As Keir Starmer’s premiership ends, the debate over his legacy begins.
For workers, there should be no debate at all: it is the Employment Rights Act 2025. For me, as the general secretary of a major trade union, and for all workers in the UK, there is no question that this can and should be his biggest legacy.
Most of it is yet to be implemented and remains subject to a seemingly never-ending stream of consultations, but it is still, without question, the biggest rebalancing of workplace rights in favour of workers and their unions for a generation.
It means sick pay from your first day off, not your fourth. It means an end to the cap on unfair dismissal compensation. And it means day-one rights to paternity, parental and bereavement leave.
I use the words “can” and “should” deliberately because there remain significant risks to reaping the full benefit of the act. Some of these are amplified by Keir Starmer’s resignation and must be addressed by his successor who seems almost certain to be Andy Burnham.
The most obvious is repeated changes in personnel. The Employment Rights Bill, as it once was, started with Angela Rayner, Jonathan Reynolds and Justin Madders in charge but was passed under Peter Kyle and Kate Dearden. That personnel change caused delays, and I hope the new Prime Minister will reflect carefully on how they deliver continuity to this vital area of work. Minister Dearden in particular has skilfully conducted the various discussions needed to progress the consultation process.
There is also a significant risk from those who see an opportunity to change or delay the implementation of the act, whether that is some in the business community trying to unpick hard-won new rights, or those on the trade union side who believe some areas have been diluted on the legislation’s journey through an election and Parliament. This must not be allowed to happen.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t more we can do on workers’ rights, of course there is. There are many commitments in Labour’s manifesto and Plan to Make Work Pay, which were never meant to be implemented through the ERA and are outstanding, such as new laws on equal pay or considering the rights of freelance workers. This is where the focus of the movement should be, not on trying to use a change of government to revisit overly detailed peeves about the ERA which misses its central messages and delivery. It’s vital that the new government puts in place a plan to fully deliver Make Work Pay before the end of the Parliament.
The final, and ultimately the most existential, threat to the progress we have made on workers’ rights is of course the likelihood that the next elected government will be led by a deregulating party of the right. The strongest bulwark against this will be strong and growing unions in both the private and public sectors, something that will only happen if improvements to union recognition rules and new rights of union access are delivered without delay.
But this is also an opportunity for Andy Burnham to build on Keir Starmer’s legacy and actually reap the political rewards. If people can see the improvements in their working lives, they will be much more willing to give Labour another chance.
Keir Starmer may have delivered the ERA but too often the government has seemed nervous about talking about it. At the same time as making work more secure through regulation, it has talked up its 25 per cent cut in regulation, casting it as a barrier to growth.
A more positive No 10 should change tack, and bring businesses, unions and government together on the same footing to really hammer out the problems our economy faces and deliver a positive plan for growth that works for businesses and workers alike.
If Andy Burnham does all of this, he won’t just secure Keir Starmer’s most important legacy – he will give workers a reason to feel it, and himself the chance to make his own mark on the country.
Mike Clancy is general secretary of Prospect
