CANADIAN HR STRATEGY/13
U.K. employment rights are homegrown," says Bronstein, add-
ing most of the employment laws and regulations in place now
"didn't originally derive from EU law at all."
For example, protection for employees in the U.K. can be
traced back to 1725 when Parliament passed an act outlawing
deductions from wages. The U.K. has also had statutory redun-
dancy payments since 1965, protection against unfair dismissal
since 1970, equal pay for men and women since 1970, legislation
prohibiting sex discrimination at work since 1975, race discrimi-
nation since 1976 and disability discrimination since 1996.
"All of those rights began as domestic law and have nothing
whatsoever to do with the EU," says Bronstein.
In addition, the U.K. has gone above and beyond what the
EU requires in several areas, including minimum paid vaca-
tion days and parental leave.
"Against that background, one looks at what the politicians
are saying and, fairly uniformly, they're saying there is not go-
ing to be any sort of bon re of workers' rights as a consequence
of leaving the European Union," says Bronstein. "So, from the
perspective of a Canadian employer with operations in the
U.K., there's unlikely to be any sort of major change in employ-
ment regulation."
IMPACTS ON THE TALENT POOL
That stability doesn't necessarily apply to the availability of la-
bour, post-Brexit. The U.K.'s decision to leave the EU could
have repercussions that affect about one million EU nationals
currently living and working in the U.K., and about 800,000
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