A key provision of the Employment Rights Act 2025 comes into force on 30 October. From that date unions will be able to seek access agreements with employers. This can cover physical or virtual access but typically an access agreement would mean that trade union officials would be able to enter a workplace at least once a week. They will be able to talk to employees, organise and recruit members and provide them with support and representation.
I want to look at one particular issue that I’ve been asked about a lot and that is whether workers who are attending union meetings should be given paid time off to do so.
The question arises from the Code of Practice that will govern the way in which the CAC (the Central Arbitration Committee which oversees the whole scheme) will deal with applications for a union access agreement. A Draft Code of Practice was published on 8 April 2026 for consultation. It contained a section headed “When can access take place?” and it said this:
“The union’s access to the workers should usually take place during normal working hours but at times which minimise any possible disruption to the activities of the employer. This will ensure that the union is able to communicate with as large a number of the workers as possible.
The union should ensure that disruption to the business is minimised especially for small businesses which might find it more difficult to organise cover for absent workers.
In deciding the timing of meetings and other events, the union and the employer should be guided by the employer’s custom and practice when communicating with its workforce. Consideration should be given to holding events, particularly those involving a large proportion of the workers in the group of workers, during rest periods or towards the end of a shift, where possible.” (Draft Code paras 76-78)
That seems like common sense to me. I didn’t read anything dramatic into the recommendation that access should take place during normal working hours. If you’re going to give a union access to a workplace, it makes sense to do that at a time when the workers are actually there. There’s not much point in giving the union access at 6 in the evening if everyone has gone home at 5.
When it came to the finalised Code of Practice, there were some minor changes to the drafting and then an extra paragraph. What is now paragraph 83 of the code says this:
An employer should ensure that workers who attend a meeting organised by the trade union with the employer’s agreement through an access arrangement during work time, should be paid, in full, for the duration of their absence from work. As mentioned in paragraph 79 of this Code [para 76 in the Draft Code], access should take place during working hours, and so workers should be paid in full for this time.
The consternation that that has caused comes from the suggestion that workers should be entitled to paid time off to attend a union meeting. We already have statutory rights to time off for union members. They are set out in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (see sections 168-172). And the general rule is that paid time off is reserved for trade union officials and representatives carrying out their duties. Union members have a right to time off for other union activities – but this is unpaid. Is this Code of Practice sneaking in a right to paid time off through the back door?
I don’t think so. But before I explain why, read paragraph 83 again. In particular, read the last sentence. Does that really sound like a sentence that you would normally find in a code of practice?
Because it sounds to me like an argument. It sounds like a submission that somebody would make when suggesting changes to draft code. Here’s my theory. In the course of consultation a union representative wanted to argue that it should be made explicitly clear that employees should not have their pay docked if they choose to attend a union meeting that’s organised during working time. I can envisage a conversation where the union representative said to a civil servant: “Look, you say in one paragraph that access should take place during working hours and if that’s true you should make it clear that workers should be paid in full for this time.” And basically, that point was captured almost verbatim and transferred into the code itself.
I don’t think there’s anything sinister about that. It’s a perfectly reasonable point for a union representative to make. It just makes the drafting seem rather odd and perhaps emphasises the point more than it needs to.
Access in practice
Let’s think sensibly about what the impact of this really is. Suppose that what the union wants to do is to organise a weekly meeting at a workplace where its members and potential members are free to come and listen to what the union has to say. If it can’t agree the terms of that with the employer, the matter will go before the CAC, who will have to decide whether that is a reasonable thing to put in the agreement and, if so, how the meeting should be organised.
If there is an obvious lunch break in the middle of the day, then it’s likely that the CAC will specify that that’s when the meeting should take place. Perhaps lunchtimes are staggered and half the workforce takes its lunch break during one hour and the other half takes its lunch break during another hour. Perhaps the CAC will say that the union should be able to hold two meetings, one in each break period. Perhaps lunchtime is flexible, and workers can simply decide for themselves whether to take their lunch break when the union meeting is being held. If the lunch break is a paid break then of course those workers who go to a lunchtime meeting will continue to be paid in full for their attendance.
But if the break is unpaid then it seems inconceivable to me that the CAC would specify in the agreement that those workers who choose to attend would get paid extra for doing so. Nor can I envisage the CAC saying that because lunch breaks are unpaid, union meetings should be held at some other time. The whole tenor of the Code of Practise is that access should be granted in a way that goes with the grain of the employer’s existing arrangements.
If there is no convenient break time (paid or unpaid) during which a meeting can be held then the Code says the CAC must look at what the employer does when it wants to talk to its entire workforce. Perhaps there is a team meeting at the start of each shift. The CAC might decide that once a week some part of that team meeting should be given over to a union representative to talk to the workforce as a whole. I would expect the time allocated for this would depend on how much time is usually given over to this sort of meeting. Whatever the CAC imposes, however, the employer would obviously not be able to dock the pay of the workers who are at the meeting for the duration of the time that the union official is speaking.
I see paragraph 83 as simply making it clear that workers should not lose pay as a result of union access. I don’t think it means that workers will be able to earn more than they otherwise would have done by going to union meetings.
Getting ready
The right of access is a significant new tool for unions – but employers should not treat it as some sort of crisis. There was a column by Camilla Cavendish in the FT last week which suggested that the threat of union access might be enough to dissuade employers from growing beyond the threshold of 21 workers needed for the CAC to consider a union’s application. She ends by suggesting that the Government’s reforms are taking labour relations back 50 years. This is all a massive overreaction, and people just need to chill.
I would expect unions to be strategic in how they use their resources to seek access to workplaces where they currently don’t have a presence. It is not as though every workplace in the country will have union officials knocking on the door come October 31st. And I’d be surprised if many unions have the resources to seek access to employers with just 20 or 30 employees. Frankly there will be easier ways to reach those individuals than making a formal request for an access agreement.
I’m often asked what employers should be doing to get ready for this new right and to be honest I struggle to think of much. As long as there is a clear line of communication so that the business knows when a request has been made, what workplace it relates to, and who is going to be in a position to reach an agreement with the relevant union I think the best strategy is to sit back, relax, and deal with access requests when they come in. They aren’t something to be afraid of.
When a request is made the best way to deal with it is not to find some way of keeping the union out but to do your very best to reach an agreement. Engage constructively with the process and if the request causes problems for the business, explain what they are and try to find a practical way around them. I actually have some faith in the common sense of the Central Arbitration Committee. And I don’t see them imposing access agreements that get in the way of a business operating effectively or require it to grant additional paid time off for large groups of workers.
Again, I don’t want to play down the importance of the new right of access. I think it is clear that in the coming years many businesses and HR professionals are going to have to understand and engage with trade unions rather better than hitherto. But that’s a skills issue – not an existential threat.
