The Act contains a number of measures to update trade union legislation.
	The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 introduced minimum service levels to be applied within certain sectors during strike action, enabling employers to issue a work notice, to require people to work on a day of strike action. The Act repeals amendments made by the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 to the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and any minimum service regulations lapse.
	The Act repeals amendments made by the Trade Union Act 2016 to the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. These changes remove restrictions on trade unions thereby giving them greater freedom to organise, represent and negotiate on behalf of their workers. Some provisions from the Trade Union Act 2016 are retained such as, the Certification Officer’s freedom from ministerial direction.
	The new provisions in the Act follow extensive consultation and seek to deliver a balance between allowing for effective industrial action, while also ensuring that employers are able to reasonably prepare. The Act abolishes the 10-year requirement for unions to ballot members on political fund maintenance, simplifies the information requirements for industrial action ballots and notice to employers, extends the expiry of mandate for industrial action from 6 to 12 months, and ensures that trade unions provide a 10-day notice period for industrial action.
	The Government believes the current statutory trade union recognition process makes it too difficult for unions to gain recognition. The Act improves the process and transparency around trade union recognition and access, including streamlining the trade union recognition process and strengthening protections against unfair practices.
	The Government believes that there are currently no clear and consistent rules regulating access to workplaces for trade union members meeting and representing their members. The Act provides a legal framework for employers and unions to negotiate access agreements, making it easier for unions to gain access to workplaces, including digital access, in line with modern day workplaces, to assist individual union members and to help unions to recruit and organise.
	Union representatives undertake a variety of roles in collective bargaining and in working with management, communicating with union members, liaising with their trade union and in handling individual disciplinary and grievance matters on behalf of employees. The Act ensures all trade union representatives have sufficient access to facilities, for example office and meeting space and access to the internet / intranets to carry out their duties, as is reasonable in all the circumstances. The Act also strengthens the existing right to facility time off that trade union representatives have. In addition, these measures create a statutory right for trade union equality representatives in order to strengthen equality at work.
	In April 2024 the Supreme Court ruled that section 146 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 was in breach of Article 11 ECHR by failing to provide for any protection for striking union members from detriments imposed by the employer, as the current legislation is silent in this area. The Act ensures legislation will be compatible with ECHR and ensures that protections against detriments for trade union representatives and members extend to industrial action. This will be delivered via secondary legislation. The Act also removes the cap under section 238A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 on the number of weeks that an employee is protected for when taking industrial action, where the reason for the dismissal is taking protected industrial action.
	There is currently no duty on employers to inform their workers of their right to join a trade union. The Act introduces this duty and requires employers to:
include information about the right to join a trade union in a written statement that workers must receive when they receive the written statement provided to them under section 1 of the ERA 1996.
regularly inform workers of their right to join a trade union thereafter.
	Blacklisting in the context of employment law is the practice of compiling information on individuals concerning their trade union membership and activities, with a view to that information being used by employers or employment agencies to discriminate in relation to recruitment or treatment. The Act updates blacklisting legislation to protect a wider range of people from blacklisting due to trade union membership or activity.
Voice at Work