Employment Rights Bill - “House of Lords vs House of Commons | The Tug-of-War Over Workers’ Rights

The eagerly awaited Employment Rights Bill has hit another set back during its final stages. 

28th October 2025 saw the House of Lords reject some amendments made by the House of Commons, particularly relating to one of the biggest shakeups in Employment Law – day one unfair dismissal rights. Day-one unfair dismissal rights were opposed by 301 votes to 153 meaning the Bill has been sent back to the House of Commons to rethink the amendment, in favour of reducing the current two-year length of service requirement to six months. 

The House of Lords believe the reduction will support both employers and employees in providing greater job security along with the ability to navigate legislation changes, over the implementation of day-one rights being proposed. The proposal of day-one unfair dismissal rights has received a lot of debate since its suggestion owing to completely new processes being required. This is something the House of Lords believe could cause difficulties for employers as a system of day-one rights will mean they will not have the ability to 'test' if a new hire is a good match, potentially putting employers off recruiting in the first place.  

Lord Vaux of Harrowden said “The introduction of day one unfair dismissal rights is the most damaging element in this Bill, in my opinion.” With Baron Sharpe saying day-one unfair dismissal rights would discourage employers from “taking a risk” on young workers, echoing some of the sentiments in recent reports made. 

Additionally, the amendment in favour of casual workers receiving guaranteed hours was rejected and returned to the House of Commons for consideration for employers instead to write to workers at the end of a reference period, offering guaranteed hours and give them the option to accept or decline.

Other rejections were also noted in respect of proposals regarding an automatic ability to join a union and plans for the threshold required for industrial action. 

The Commons and Lords now enter a back and forth process with the Bill being exchanged between them until they both agree on the final version. There has been no official time limit for this meaning the certainty of the Bills future remains unknown. Essentially if no agreement can be reached within the parliamentary session, it may not become law. 

With day-one rights for unfair dismissal being one of Labour's major manifesto commitments, it does raise the question on how likely it will be for anything else to be agreed.  This means the game of ‘ping pong’ between the two houses could drag on – watch this space!!

Photo by Marcin Nowak on Unsplash