United Kingdom labour law regulates the relations between workers, employers and trade unions.Northern Ireland has specific legislation and is excluded from two primary statutes, the ERA 1996 s 244 and Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 s 301, but has mostly analogous provisions and falls under most of the other Acts and Regulations. People at work in the UK have a minimum set of employment rights,See KW Wedderburn, The Worker and the Law (3rd edn Harmondsworth 1986) 6, referring to a "floor of rights", and Gisda Cyf v Barratt UKSC 41, from Acts of Parliament, Regulations, common law and equity. This includes the right to a minimum wage of £12.71 for over-21-year-olds from April 2026 under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. The Working Time Regulations 1998 give the right to 28 days paid holidays, breaks from work, and attempt to limit long working hours. The Employment Rights Act 1996 gives the right to leave for child care, and the right to request flexible working patterns. The Pensions Act 2008 gives the right to be automatically enrolled in a basic occupational pension, whose funds must be protected according to the Pensions Act 1995. Workers must be able to vote for trustees of their occupational pensions under the Pensions Act 2004. In some enterprises, such as universities or NHS foundation trusts, staff can vote for the directors of the organisation.See the Education Reform Act 1988 s 124A and Sch 7A, para 3. NHS Act 2006 Sch 7, paras 3-9. E McGaughey, A Casebook on Labour Law (2019) ch 11, 'Votes at work' and E McGaughey, 'Votes at Work in Britain: Shareholder Monopolisation and the Single Channel (2018) 47(1) Industrial Law Journal 76 In enterprises with over 50 staff, workers must be negotiated with, with a view to agreement on any contract or workplace organisation changes, major economic developments or difficulties.See the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004 reg 20 and Junk v Kühnel (2005) C-188/03, The UK Corporate Governance Code recommends worker involvement in voting for a listed company's board of directors but does not yet follow international standards in protecting the right to vote in law.See the Companies Act 2006 ss 110 ff Collective bargaining, between democratically organised trade unions and the enterprise's management, has been seen as a "single channel" for individual workers to counteract the employer's abuse of power when it dismisses staff or fix the terms of work. Collective agreements are ultimately backed up by a trade union's right to strike: a fundamental requirement of democratic society in international law. Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 strike action is protected when it is "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute".

As well as the law's aim for fair treatment, the Equality Act 2010 requires that people are treated equally, unless there is a good justification, based on their sex, race, sexual orientation, religion or belief and age. To combat social exclusion, employers must positively accommodate the needs of disabled people. Part-time staff, agency workers, and people on fixed-term contracts must be treated equally compared to full-time, direct and permanent staff.Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, Fixed-Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 and Agency Workers Regulations 2010 To tackle unemployment, all employees are entitled to reasonable notice before dismissal after a qualifying period of a month, and in principle can only be dismissed for a fair reason. Employees are also entitled to a redundancy payment if their job was no longer economically necessary.ERA 1996 ss 86, 94 and 135. The qualification period is one month for one week's notice, and after two years, employees must have at least two weeks' notice, a fair reason and redundancy pay. The minimum level of notice and redundancy pay increases each year of employment. If an enterprise is bought or outsourced, the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 require that employees' terms cannot be worsened without a good economic, technical or organisational reason. The purpose of these rights is to ensure people have dignified living standards, whether or not they have the relative bargaining power to get good terms and conditions in their contract.See Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher UKSC 41, Regulations relating to external shift hours communication with employees will be introduced by the government, with official sources stating that it should boost production at large.

History

Modern labour law is mostly a creation of the last three decades of the 20th century. However, as a system of regulating the employment relationship, labour law has existed since people worked.E McGaughey, A Casebook on Labour Law (Hart 2019 ) ch 1. S Deakin, C Barnard, Z Adams, S Fraser-Butlin, Labour Law (Hart 2021) ch 1 In feudal England, after the Black Death with a shortage of workers and consequent price rises, the Ordinance of Labourers 1349 and the Statute of Labourers 1351 suppressed wages to pre-plague levels, banned workers unionising, and created offences for any able-bodied person that did not work. Ultimately this led to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, which was followed by the Statute of Cambridge 1388, banning workers moving around the country. All these repressive acts were signs that serfdom was breaking down. The more enlightened Truck Acts, dating from 1464, required that workers be paid in cash and not kind. In 1772 slavery was declared to be illegal in R v Knowles, ex parte Somersett,(1772) 20 State Tr 1 and the subsequent Slave Trade Act 1807 and Slavery Abolition Act 1833 enforced prohibition throughout the British Empire.However, legacies of indentured labour continued, and it was not until the Criminal Justice Act 1948 that penal servitude, forced labour for prisoners, was abolished. In the 19th century, production boomed. Gradually people's relationship to their employers moved from one of status - formal subordination and deference - to "freedom of contract" in choosing where to work.See Henry James Sumner Maine, Ancient Law (1861) However, freedom of contract did not, as the economist Adam Smith observed, change a worker's factual dependency on employers and the threat of poverty from unemployment.A Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) Book I, ch 8, §12. Also JS Mill, Chapters on Socialism (1879) ch 1, "No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred, by the accident of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in believing."

At the Industrial Revolution's height, the British Empire organised half the world's production, on a third of the globe's surface, with a quarter of its population. Joint Stock Companies, building railways, canals and factories, manufacturing household goods, connecting telegraphs, distributing coal, formed the backbone of commerce, yet with miserable factory life. The Factory Acts dating from 1803 required minimum standards on hours and conditions of working children. Trade unions were suppressed, especially after the French Revolution of 1789, in the Combination Act 1799. The Master and Servant Act 1823 criminalised workers for disobedience, strikes were branded as an "aggravated" breach of contract. Despite this, unions grew and through massive pressure won the right to exist and bargain in the Trade Union Act 1871 and the Conspiracy, and Protection of Property Act 1875.See also, the Eleventh and Final Report of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions (1868-69); Employers and Workmen Act 1875. Toward the turn of the 20th century, in Mogul Steamship Co Ltd v McGregor, Gow & Co, AC 25 the House of Lords emphasised that businesses should be free to organise into trade associations in the same way that employees organised into unions. However, in the notorious judgment of Taff Vale Railway Co v Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, AC 426 the House of Lords changed its mind and made unions liable in economic tort for the costs of industrial action. Although a combination of employers in a company could dismiss employees without notice, a combination of employees in a trade union were punished for withdrawing their labour. The case led trade unions to form a Labour Representation Committee, which then became the Labour Party, to lobby for the reversal of the law. After their landslide victory in the 1906 general election, the Trade Disputes Act 1906 enshrined the essential principle of collective labour law that any strike "in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute" is immune from civil law sanctions. The Old Age Pensions Act 1908 provided pensions for retirees. The Trade Boards Act 1909 created the first minimum wages and the National Insurance Act 1911 levied a fee to insure people got benefits in the event of unemployment.

After the brutality of World War I, the Versailles Treaty created the International Labour Organization to draw up common standards between countries, for as it said, "peace can be established only if it is based on social justice", and echoed the US Clayton Act 1914 in pronouncing that "labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or an article of commerce".Versailles Treaty 1919, Part XIII and Art 427 But the international system remained disjointed as the United States Congress withheld its approval to join the League of Nations. Within the UK the postwar settlement was to make a home fit for heroes. Whitley Councils extended the Trade Boards Act 1909 system to Joint Industrial Councils that created sector-wide fair wage agreements,The Whitley Report was published by the Ministry of Reconstruction, see Committee on Relations between Employers and Employed, Final Report (1918) Cmnd 9153; see also, Whitley Committee, Interim Report on Joint Standing Industrial Councils (1917) Cmnd 8606 while the Ministry of Labour actively organised the growth of trade unions.See KD Ewing, 'The State and Industrial Relations: 'Collective Laissez-Faire' Revisited' (1998) 5 Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 1. This was based on a theory of collective bargaining, agreement or action, advocated by Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb in Industrial Democracy to remedy the inequality of bargaining power of workers.S Webb and B Webb, Industrial Democracy (Longmans 1902) Without legal force behind collective agreements, the law remained in a state of collective laissez faire, encouraging voluntarism for agreement and dispute settlement between industrial partners. The 1920s and 1930s were economically volatile. In 1926 a General Strike against coal miners' pay cuts paralysed the country, and though it was broken, the Labour Party formed its first government in Parliament in 1929. The onset of the Great Depression, and then war, meant little was achieved.