Updated to reflect that the Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Act is repealed by the Employment Rights Bill, which was published on 10 October 2024.
Updated to reflect that the Maternity Leave, Adoption Leave and Shared Parental Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024, which extend redundancy protection for pregnant employees and new parents, come into force on 6 April 2024.
The Workers (Predicable Terms and Conditions) Act 2023 has now received Royal Assent. But will it fix the problem of zero hours contracts and precarious work? Probably not, says XpertHR consultant editor Darren Newman, who casts an eye over Labour's plans for a "New Deal" and points to a forgotten proposal with the potential to make a real difference.
In Kücük v Land Nordrhein-Westfalen [2012] IRLR 697 ECJ, the ECJ held that an employer's use of 13 successive fixed-term contracts over a period of 11 years was not inherently in breach of the Fixed-term Workers Directive, but that the issue of objective justification had to be assessed by the national court on the particular facts of the case.
The European Court of Justice has suggested that it may be possible for employers to justify engaging an individual for more than four years on a succession of fixed-term contracts as he or she moves around to cover work for different absent employees.