Employers must protect their workers from sexual harassment – including from customers and clients – under the government’s sweeping new employment rights bill.
The new obligation is part of a series of measures published in Thursday’s landmark employment rights bill, which Labour had promised to lay before parliament within 100 days.
The bill, which is expected to take up to two years to fully implement after lengthy consultations, will give new rights to millions of workers including the right to sue their employer for unfair dismissal without waiting for two years of employment.
But the new bill also contains a slew of new protections at work, including toughened maternity and pregnancy discrimination and an obligation for employers to draw up menopause action plans.
Among the measures that have been fleshed out for the first time are a new protection from third-party harassment, which employers must take “reasonable steps” to prevent, such as protecting bartenders from harassment by pub customers.
It will mean employers will have to anticipate where such harassment may occur and put in place action plans to protect their workforce. It is likely to include reporting channels and fresh complaints procedures, as well as risk assessments. It could also include more direct communication with customers and clients about the expectations in the workplace.
The bill, which the government said would be the biggest upgrade of workers’ rights in generations, gives new rights from day one of employment including entitlement to paternity leave and unpaid parental leave.
It makes flexible working the default and bans most zero-hours contracts, though employees can request one, and abolishes fire-and-rehire practices – though critics said there were significant loopholes for employers to claim exceptional circumstances in order to downgrade terms and conditions.
It will also establish a new enforcement body, the Fair Work Agency, as a single point for whistleblowers, and to conduct inspections and issue fines. It will also abolish much of the Conservative government’s anti-trade-union laws.
The government only expects to begin consulting on the changes in 2025 and the majority will take effect no earlier than 2026. Reforms of unfair dismissal will take even longer: no sooner than autumn 2026.
Trade unions have broadly welcomed the changes, which the TUC called a “seismic shift”. But the Federation of Small Businesses said the measures would cost jobs and called the introduction of the bill “chaotic”. The Confederation of British Industry, however, said the government deserved credit “for its willingness to engage with businesses and unions on how to make a success of the plan to make work pay”.
In interviews to mark the bill’s publication, the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, said they had worked intensively to take business concerns into account. Rayner sought to reassure small businesses that the government was “getting the balance right” with its employment law changes.
“These packages are pro-business and pro-worker, and we’ve worked with businesses – big, small, medium – all over the country and we’ve had many of them welcome the measures that we’re saying,” Rayner told the BBC. “We’ve acknowledged some of the challenges around this. This is a huge reform package, therefore we’re going to make sure that they’re part of the process.”
Reynolds said the government’s intention was to introduce statutory guidance on when companies could refuse workers permission to work flexibly. “There are real business benefits and benefits for the employee of that flexibility, keeping more people in work for longer, having more people in the labour market, so those are good things,” he said.
“But of course, we are not going to dictate, it doesn’t work for everyone, but the process will be improved by this legislation.”
