FOR decades, workers in Britain have faced a steady erosion of their rights, job security and real wages.

The objective of the Employment Rights Bill, rightly heralded as the most significant expansion of workers’ rights in a generation, is to reverse this trend and improve working conditions.

However, its passage through Parliament highlighted just how significant the gaps in employment law and trade union legislation have developed over the decades and have so limited the effectiveness of unions in their task of fully defending their members.

The backdrop to the Bill is more than a decade of austerity attacks on incomes which the Spring Statement and other government decisions, such as on welfare, threaten to continue.

The decline of workers’ rights in Britain has been systematic, dating back to the Thatcher government’s legal restrictions on trade unions, collective bargaining and mass privatisation in the 1980s.

Forty years ago, around three-quarters of the workforce was covered by collective bargaining; now it is only around a quarter. These measures laid the groundwork for the insecurity that defines today’s labour market.

The rise of the gig economy, characterised by zero-hours contracts, bogus self-employment and agency work, has only worsened conditions.

Companies such as Uber, Deliveroo and Amazon dictate employment terms with minimal accountability, making the need for robust legislative protections all the more important and necessary.

Recent years have seen a resurgence in trade union activity, with public-sector workers in schools, hospitals and the Civil Service, as well as employees in transport and postal services, taking collective action against poor employer decisions and practices.

That greater numbers have been driven to strike highlights the pressing need for stronger worker protections.

Undoubtedly the Employment Rights Bill represents progress, but the government should have incorporated even more of the provisions from the New Deal for Working People to ensure the Bill was even more transformative.

Although it takes aim at exploitative practices such as zero-hours contracts, fire-and-rehire tactics and weak protections for agency workers, certain business lobbies have already attempted to secure dilutions in its provisions and they will inevitably continue to do so.

Three key areas require urgent action to ensure the Bill delivers meaningful change.

First, employment status must be clearly defined in law. A single legal definition of worker status is needed to close loopholes that allow companies to misclassify employees as self-employed, denying them essential rights such as minimum wage and holiday pay.

Even the government’s own director of labour market enforcement has warned that further delays in addressing this issue will only prolong worker exploitation.

The government has said it intends to consult on this. We are told it’s not a matter of committing to single status, it’s a matter of how to implement it and hence the proposed consultation.

The problem is that in the meantime, unscrupulous actors will seek to transfer workers out of employment and into fragile working arrangements.

Second, stronger measures are needed to prevent fire-and-rehire tactics.

While the Bill increases compensation for unfair dismissals, financial penalties alone are inadequate. When P&O Ferries fired 800 workers via video call in 2022, they knowingly broke employment law because the fines were trivial compared to their profits.

A more effective deterrent would be to grant trade unions the power to seek injunctions to prevent mass dismissals before they happen — an essential measure the government has refused to support.

Third, sectoral collective bargaining must be restored to combat declining real wages.

The Bill introduces new collective bargaining mechanisms, such as a negotiating body for adult social care and a re-established body for school support staff. While these are positive developments, they do not go far enough.

The New Deal for Working People pledged to introduce fair pay agreements across the economy, reinstating sector-wide collective bargaining to guarantee fair wages and conditions. But fair pay agreements are not designed to be a substitute for full sectoral collective bargaining; furthermore research from the OECD and IMF confirms that strong bargaining systems benefit not only workers but also the wider economy by boosting productivity and reducing inequality.

Existing national bargaining structures, such as public-sector pay review bodies, could serve as models for expanding sector-wide agreements. However, the Bill explicitly states that its newly introduced negotiating bodies should not be considered collective bargaining structures under the law, limiting their independence.

Trade union leaders such as Paul Nowak (TUC) and Mick Lynch (RMT) have urged the government to support stronger collective bargaining rights, but my amendments to enact those calls were not supported.

Similarly, there has been no progress on restructuring negotiating bodies to ensure they function as genuine collective bargaining mechanisms, a change strongly advocated by John McDonnell MP.

A clear opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of sectoral collective bargaining lies within the Civil Service, where hundreds of separate pay bargaining units create inefficiencies. Modernising this system would streamline negotiations and establish fair pay across departments.

The Bill now moves to the House of Lords, where no doubt allies such as Lord John Hendy, Tony Woodley, and Christine Blower and others will push for further improvements.

After 14 years of wage stagnation, job insecurity and rising inequality, this Bill represents a vital opportunity to rebalance power between workers and employers.

What we have to guard against is the determination of some companies to bypass these new rights and render them meaningless. If we are to end exploitative employment practices we need decisive action.

The ultimate goal should be to foster a renewed culture of workplace democracy and collective bargaining. This Bill must be strengthened rather than weakened, and today’s Campaign for Trade Union Freedom conference offers an opportunity to advance this cause.

Now is the time to continue to press for bold reforms to secure a fairer future for all workers in Britain. We must seize this moment to implement meaningful change.

Andy McDonald is Labour Party member of Parliament for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East.