UNIONS must put pressure on the Labour Party for a second Employment Rights Act (ERA) to “finish the job,” the BFAWU annual conference heard today.

Institute of Employment Rights (IER) chairman Lord John Hendy KC told delegates, referring to a potential leadership contest within the ruling party: “Now is the moment when trade unions could come together and say, whoever the new leader is, if you want to be elected, you’re going to have to put back what has been taken out of the [ERA].”

The Campaign for Trade Union Freedom, with a number of unions, have called for a second Employment Rights Bill to be passed during this parliament.

It’s proposed to make good on measures expected but missing in Labour’s flagship Employment Rights Act, which became law in December 2025.

These specific policies were outlined in a Green Paper called the New Deal for Working People, which set out “almost everything we thought a programme of industrial relations should do.”

In light of Labour’s win in 2024 with a massive parliamentary majority, Lord Hendy said: “I could not see any reason why all the proposals in the New Deal for Working People shouldn’t have been put in place.”

A key demand the IER chairman made was that any new legislation should include “a single legal status” for workers and for them to “be entitled to all employment rights from day one,” except for people “who are genuinely in business on their own account, self-employed.”

Lord Hendy also called for sectoral collective bargaining in every sector of the economy, pointing out that only about a quarter of all British workers are covered by such agreements.

Mr Hendy also called for prison officers in England to be handed back their right to strike.