Stormont stalemate delaying employment laws as urgent reforms to workplace legislation stuck in limbo

New employment laws in Westminster are normally mirrored in Northern Ireland, with ministers bringing them to the legislature as Statutory Rules that are passed by consent.

Chief Executive of the Labour Relations Agency, Don Leeson, explained that at present backlogs are increasing.

“There are 30 odd pieces of law that have been passed in Westminster that have not been passed here around employment law,” he said.

“As Northern Ireland tends to follow parity with the rest of Great Britain, all that legislation's backed up and got to come through, and Westminster's very active at doing more things.”

And, while employment law is generally perceived as being protecting workers, it has implications for businesses and investment.

“It means for employers operating across the UK they are operating different employment legislation, which is not ideal.

“For example Westminster is just bringing in carers leave. If you have caring responsibilities and then you can get leave or you have rights to apply for leave.

“Whereas here that's not yet in. And obviously won't be in for several years now.”

Mr Leeson explained that while there are several pieces of employment law the thinking is now that when Stormont returns there will be an effort to wrap a lot of new employment law into one big bill, however, it will still require time to consult, develop and pass the Assembly.

He says that investors may find this problematic: “It makes organisations getting their head around Northern Ireland more difficult because especially if we're seeing a lot of investment coming from the south, or Great Britain,” he said.

“They're obviously operating under different employment law regimes so they've got to come here and they've got to get their head around all the peculiarities around that.”

Mr Leeson also explained there were other roadblocks ahead as Article Two of the Northern Ireland protocol could also lead to issues that were not anticipated at the time.

“The article is a ‘non-regression clause’, which means that Northern Ireland's legislation has to keep a number of rights the same and can't be reduced,” he said.

“Anything that Great Britain passes as legislation to say take away sexual discrimination against women, for example, that would be a regressive and that would be unlawful under Article Two.

“That couldn't happen here, but there's a debate about whether Article Two means that we have to keep pace with EU legislation.

“For example there's a piece of legislation on carers leave, as mentioned, in that all EU member states had to have carer's leave legislation by August 1. Great Britain, paradoxically, has met that while Northern Ireland has not.”

The delay also means that progressive work that the Assembly has pioneered cannot progress.

“Northern Ireland is ‘trailblazing’ laws on workplace leave in cases of domestic violence leave and miscarriage, said Mr Leeson.

“The new legislation, which was a private member's bill that went through at the end of the last assembly on domestic violence, provides for victims of domestic abuse to have what they call safe leave, so they're able to take 10 days leave.

“It provides space to sort their life, deal with the consequences.”

As part of its work on raising awareness on employment law for both workers and their employers the LRA is collaborating with the Department for the Economy on the domestic violence law, which received Royal Assent in May.

“The primary legislation has been passed, it's not been enacted yet,” Mr Leeson explained.

“We're waiting on the department to enact that, but we're working with them to do the guidance around all that for employers and employees around explaining what the legislation is.”

As well as the Domestic Violence (Safe Space) Bill, there was a flurry of legislation passed before the collapse of the current Assembly.

“Last December MLAs rushed through a number of private members' bills, because they obviously knew they weren't going to be coming back for a while,” he said.

“Some of the stuff was quite radical.

“Another area of trailblazing was to amend the parental bereavement leave, which was brought in Great Britain and gave rights to parents to have leave in child loss and so on. When that went through, it was amended by the MLA's to include leave for miscarriage. New Zealand is the only country in the world that has this in place.”

The Labour Relations Agency provides advice, conciliation and support to both employees and employers, as well as mediation as appropriate.

It also works with government agencies to develop guidance around implementation of new legislation and advice on how it is developed in the workplace.

It operates a telephone helpline for employees and employers, which saw a rise in enquiries during the pandemic.