The Labour government is considering a plan to give trade unions weekly access to businesses’ offices, with fines worth up to £75,000 to be dished out to bosses who bar them from entering.
The Employment Rights Bill (ERB) is set to include powers for trade unions to gain “right of access” to workplaces, a perk they do not currently enjoy.
The government is exploring plans to hit employers who prevent trade union officials from entering office premises with hefty fines.
Under one proposal in a consultation document shared with industry, employers could be asked to cough up to £75,000, with bigger employers set to pay higher fees.
The fine would be determined by the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), a quango that oversees regulation of workers rights in the UK.
Another suggestion floated proposes that fines would be “proportional to the nature of the breach in question”.
Industry stakeholders are being asked on whether trade unions should have access to offices over a period of two years and be able to enter them on a weekly basis, with access terms able to be renewed.
Employers may also have to respond to requests for access from union chiefs within five working days.
Currently, union bosses are not allowed to interfere with business operations in an unreasonable manner, which is set to remain the case after the ERB comes into force.
The earliest time an official decision on terms of unions’ access to workplaces could be made is the week before Christmas, coinciding with Labour’s deadline for getting the Employment Rights Bill to receive royal assent.
Unions to make offices ‘playgrounds for activists’
Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said the proposals represented Keir Starmer’s urge to find “new ways to give the union barons more power”.
“A week before Halloween, the unions’ plan to wreck our economy has been laid bare in all its horror,” Griffith said.
“Under the guise of improving workers’ rights, we now know Labour’s plan to hand control of our workplaces to the union bully boys.
“Union representatives will inevitably use this special access to pressure workers into joining them and supporting their political causes – which, naturally, are usually aligned with Labour. Businesses will become playgrounds for activists rather than engines for growth.”
A range of employers have taken aim at key aspects of the Employment Rights Bill, including the granting of ‘day one rights’ to people dismissed from jobs within the first six months of being hired.
The change will allow these people to sue business chiefs for unfair dismissal, with the burden of costs falling heavily on employers.
But a number of other more technical changes in workers’ rights reforms could later emerge as more difficult problems for businesses to manage, including giving union leaders a greater say in striking.
In a speech to parliament on Wednesday, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said the bill was “a game changer for millions stuck in insecure and low paid work”.
The Department of Business and Trade did not immediately respond to a request for comment.