The IER Podcast

A flagship policy of the Starmer Government’s upgrade to workers’ rights was the promise to end the exploitative use of zero-hours contracts. Though these types of casual labour arrangements now referred to as ‘zero-hours contracts’ have been around for a long time, the past decade has seen the labour movement call out employers for abusing the one-sided flexibility of these arrangements, plunging millions into insecurity and low wages.

In present day, ONS data (2025) shows near record levels of zero hours contracts: 1.7 million people in the UK are currently subjected to these arrangements, which is the second-highest figure ever recorded, and nearly three in four of them are in what’s classed as severely insecure work.

Labour’s New Deal for Working People had promised to ban these contracts altogether, but four years later this materialised in the ERA 2025 as a guaranteed hours framework that preserves the legal status of zero hours contracts.

In this episode, Director of the Institute of Employment Rights, James Harrison is in conversation with Dr Zoe Adams, labour law scholar and Affiliated Lecturer in Law at King’s College, University of Cambridge. She is also the author of ‘The Legal Concept of Work’ (2022), and ‘Labour and the Wage’ (2020).

In this episode, Dr Adams explains the mechanism behind the ERA 2025 approach to restricting the use of zero-hours contracts, and evaluates whether these provisions go far enough to bring their use to an end. James and Zoe also talk about the dangers ahead with loopholes left open during the consultation period, and worries surrounding the enforcement of the guaranteed hours offer. They also consider the ways in which unscrupulous employers will still be able to get around this legislation if the Government doesn’t commit to strengthening it and addressing the causes of over-reliance on casual labour arrangements. 

Take a look at the Institute’s factsheet on ZHCs, authored by Dr Adams: https://www.ier.org.uk/employment-rights-bill-ier-fact-sheets/

This IER podcast and views expressed by experts does not necessarily reflect the collective view of the Institute. The responsibility of the Institute is limited to approving its media, publications, briefings and responses as worthy of consideration.

For over a decade, Spain's food delivery giants built their business on a the premise that riders were 'collaborators', self-employed and outside the reach of labour law, and responsible for their own risk. That era could now be over for food delivery service riders in Spain. On 15th January 2026, Uber Eats Spain announced it would abandon its hybrid model of employed and self-employed riders in favour of an employees-only structure, following Glovo Spain which made the same move in July 2025. Between them, Spain's two largest platforms have now shifted their entire rider workforce onto contracts of employment, bringing riders fully within the protection of Spanish labour law.
In this episode, we are joined by Dr Antonio Garcia Munoz (lecturer in Labour Law at the University of Glasgow) who is interviewed by Donya Jeyabalasingham (IER) on this case study, exploring what drove this dramatic reversal, what it means for riders' working rights, pay, and job security, and what lessons it holds for gig economy regulation elsewhere.

For further information, you can read Antonio's blog on this issue here: https://www.ier.org.uk/comments/the-end-of-the-gig-economy-the-case-of-spanish-riders/

In accordance with the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA), a new Fair Work Agency (FWA) was launched on the 7 April 2026.
The initial 'New Deal for Workers' (2021) said that 'Rights and protections are only worth the paper they are written on if they are enforced'. In this episode of the Working Life Podcast, we take a look at the hurdles this new agency is likely to face in its ambition towards achieving a significant improvement in compliance levels in the field of employment law.
We are especially pleased to have Professor David Whyte (Professor of Climate Justice at the QMUL School of Law and author of 'Ecocide: kill the corporation before it kills us') on. David is one of the foremost academic experts on the relationship between law and corporate power, with a unique level of expertise on issues ranging from working conditions, institutional fraud and corruption, human rights violations, and the institutions around the enforcement of labor rights, in which he is a great expert.
David has also co-authored (with Professor Ruth Dukes (Glasgow) the IER Briefing on the Fair Work Agency, which we recommend taking a look at once you've given the episode a listen. You can access it by following this link: https://www.ier.org.uk/publications/briefing-the-governments-fair-work-agency-risks-becoming-a-toothless-watchdog/
In this episode, Professor Nicola Countouris (UCL and IER) talks to David about the FWA, what its strategic priorities are, the consequences of public sector funding cuts, and what the agency will need in order to be effective and credible.

Neil Todd, leading trade union law expert and Partner at Thompsons Solicitors and Carolyn Jones, Senior Vice President of the Institute of Employment Rights (IER), join us for the third episode of Working Life.
In this episode, we revisit the detrimental practice of fire and rehire and examine where the Employment Rights Act 2025 ultimately landed after the government's initial pledge to ban the practice outright.
We explore where the Act strengthens protections for workers facing attempts to erode their terms and conditions through dismissal and re-engagement, and whether it goes far enough to prevent employers from exploiting potential loopholes. Neil unpacks the new provisions, explaining which contractual changes are covered, the circumstances in which employers may still rely on statutory exceptions, and whether tribunal remedies will provide a sufficient deterrent against unlawful practices.
Drawing on lessons from the P&O Ferries dismissals in 2022, we ask whether the new framework will genuinely end the misuse of fire and rehire, or simply reshape the calculations some employers may make when considering it.
 
Chapters:
00:00:06 Introduction
00:01:48 Changes made by the Employment Rights Act 2025
00:04:08 Does the Act address the P&O scenario?
00:06:07 How the Act’s initial provisions were weakened
00:07:47 The Government’s consultation process on fire and rehire and restricted variations
00:11:23 The ‘financial difficulties’ exemption
00:15:01 Remedies and interim relief

In the latest episode of ‘Working Life’, IER Chairperson Lord John Hendy KC discusses the right to strike in the UK with Professor Tonia Novitz, a leading academic in labour law at the University of Bristol Centre for Law at Work. She sits on the advisory board of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) and is co-editor of ‘The Right to Strike Reimagined’ (Bloomsbury 2026,) as well as co-author of ‘The Right to Strike in International Law’ (Bloomsbury 2021). 
In this second instalment of the Working Life Podcast, Lord Hendy KC and Professor Novitz begin with a historical discussion of the first recorded instances of strike action in Ancient Egypt, and what we mean today by calling for an enshrined positive ‘Right to Strike’. The Employment Rights Act 2025 took the necessary step of repealing contemporary anti-union legislation such as the majority of the Trade Union Act (2016) and the MSL (Strikes) Act 2023, and our speakers discuss how far this will go to address the restrictions that have been placed on workers’ ability to strike over the past 40 years. 
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to the Right to Strike and its History
07:37 What is meant by exercising the ‘Right to Strike’
13:06 Contemporary attempts at restricting the power to take industrial action
14:40 The Employment Rights Act 2025 and the right to strike omission
18:30 The P&O Ferry dispute 
21:17 New changes to balloting, picketing law and strike mandates
25:40 The extension of protection from dismissal and detriment for taking industrial action
28:00 International Labour Standards and the Right to Strike
35:20 The Role of the International Labour Organization
Key quotations:
“The architecture and framework of very coercive [anti-union] legislation has been retained. This Government has modified and repealed aspects of the TU act 2016, and more importantly that terrible piece of legislation the Minimum Services Levels (Strikes) Act 2023, but that requirement of a ballot, those requirements of notification to the employer, though they have been tinkered with and are not as cruel and stringent as they were, they do basically remain the same”. (Professor Novitz)
 “Without some kind of solidarity action being possible […] you had no way to place adequate pressure on the employer to adhere to their collective agreements and to pay workers a reasonable sum for their labour or even to comply with the law” (Professor Novitz on the P&O Ferry dispute)