Employment Edit: 29 October 2026

By Katie Wooller

29 Oct 2026 7 min read

A medical worker looking into microscope in lab

October reforms special

Access for trade unions

From tomorrow, trade unions will have a new statutory right to seek access (digital and/or physical) to workplaces for the purpose of meeting, supporting, representing, recruiting and organising workers, and facilitating collective bargaining. Importantly, a union will be able to make a request for access even where it is not recognised by the employer and has little or no existing membership or presence within the workforce.

Below we explain how we can help your organisation adapt to these reforms, and where you can find more information.

How we can help

There is a lot for employers to think about in light of these new access rights. Some of the points to consider are practical, such as who will co-ordinate your response to any request and what would access look like in practice for your organisation. However, much of the thinking at this stage is focussed on broader strategic issues, such as how any request would impact on your wider industrial relations strategy and whether you want to proactively explore access prior to any request being received.

We can help you work through these strategic questions, as well helping you get on top of the nuts and bolts of access request readiness. If we can help your organisation, please contact Luke Bowery or your usual employment team contact.

Want to find out more?

In this guide, we explain what constitutes “access”, how trade unions can make a request, how employers can respond, and how the new regime will be enforced. Our recent webinar, in which we walked through the new regime and considered what it means for employers, is also now available on demand. Or, if an at-a-glance update is more your thing, then look no further than this blog post.

Preventing harassment

Two important anti-harassment changes take effect tomorrow:

The existing duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment will be strengthened so that employers will need to take “all” reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers in the course of their employment (rather than “reasonable steps”).
Workers will be able to bring a claim against their employer where they are harassed by a third party in the course of their employment and the employer has not taken all reasonable steps to prevent it.

Below we explain how we can help your organisation adapt to these reforms, and where you can find more information.

How we can help

Whilst the priority should be reviewing and updating your risk assessment, that alone is unlikely to be sufficient to satisfy your obligations under these harassment prevention rules. To meet the higher bar of “all” reasonable steps and to address the broader risk of third-party harassment, you will need to consider, identify, and implement further practical steps to prevent harassment. What these steps will look like will depend on your workforce and ways of working. If we can help your organisation work through these questions, please contact Katherine Flower or your usual employment team contact.

Want to find out more?

We have a host of resources exploring the implications of the expansion of the duty to prevent sexual harassment and the new third party harassment claim:

We held an online discussion discussing what’s changing and how you can prepare.
In this guide to the reforms, we set out the key steps employers should take to reduce the risks.
In this episode of our ERA Explained podcast, Katherine speaks to highly experienced GC, Christy Baker, on how businesses can address these risks in the context of supplier relationships.

Autumn budget

For all the latest news and analysis of the measures covered in yesterday’s budget (including National Minimum Wage updates, a new Parental Allowance for self-employed parents and reform of non-compete clauses), visit our dedicated hub for the Autumn Budget 2026.

Visit our hub

In other news…

Pregnant employees and new parents

The ERA enables the government to introduce new protections relating to dismissals during pregnancy or family-related leave or after such leave but, until last week, it was not clear what those new protections would look like and exactly who would be protected. Last week, the government provided more detail on this significant new protection in its consultation response.

It plans to introduce a new “day one” protection for:

pregnant employees:
employees who are on maternity, adoption, shared parental, neonatal care or bereaved partner’s paternity leave; and
employees who are in the first 6 months after returning from such leave (save that employees who took shared parental, neonatal care or bereaved partner’s paternity leave will only be covered by this post-return protection if they took at least 6 weeks’ continuous leave).

The new rules will raise the bar for dismissals of protected employees – where an employer dismisses a protected employee, it will need to justify that dismissal as a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. This means the employer will have to identify a genuine business interest that it is furthering by dismissing the employee and show that the dismissal is proportionate. This latter point in effect requires the employer to show that there are no less-discriminatory alternatives (e.g. a warning, redeployment, or changes to the employee’s duties) that would also achieve the legitimate aim. Read more about what this means for employers on our ERA hub page below.

Changing terms and conditions

In other important ERA news, the government issued several updates last week relating to its reform of “fire and rehire” or changing terms and conditions of employment. By way of a reminder, under these reforms, a dismissal will be automatically unfair if the reason for the dismissal was either because the employee did not agree to a “restricted variation” of their contract of employment or in order to re-engage them or replace them with someone else to carry out substantially the same duties under a varied contract of employment (including at least one “restricted variation”).

In the response to its consultation into the scope of “restricted variations”, the government provided the following important updates:

This reform is now expected to come into effect in March 2027, rather than January 2027.
All expenses and benefits in kind will be excluded from the scope of “restricted variation”, save for certain types of travel expenses (including mileage), accommodation expenses and long-term accommodation as a benefit in kind. Changes to contractual shifts that require an employee to work at nighttime/in the daytime/on a weekend/on a weekday where they were not required to before will constitute “restricted variations”. Further details of these exclusions and inclusions will be set out in secondary legislation.

The government also launched consultation into a draft updated Code of Practice on dismissal and re-engagement, with a view to the new Code being introduced in summer 2027. You can read more about this reform on our ERA hub page below.yment, or changes to the employee’s duties) that would also achieve the legitimate aim. Read more about what this means for employers on our ERA hub page below.