Employment Partner Jo Mackie argues that the UK’s pursuit of post-Brexit trade deals risks undermining domestic workers’ rights and equality protections.
Jo’s article was published in Raconteur, 14 May 2025.
The USA-UK trade deal has been lauded for helping to save the UK car and steel industries and for lowering the tariff rates imposed by President Trump on UK imports into the USA.
However, employee rights in the UK are more extensive than those in the USA. For example, the UK offers protection against unfair dismissal, greater protections for redundancy, paid sickness absence with SSP, specific protection against discrimination, and gives longer notice periods – not to mention the significantly greater annual leave quota given to UK workers (a minimum of 5.6 weeks as opposed to the USA where only public holidays are mandated and any other annual leave is merely customary).
The threat to equality law
The US Government has explicitly threatened to withdraw work from companies that comply with EU equality law. In the UK this means the Equality Act 2010– which provides the protection against discrimination on grounds 9 characteristics including age, race, sex and disability.
The US threat came in the form of a letter to EU companies asking them to prove that they complied with a Trump signed executive order banning Diversity Equity and Inclusion (‘DEI’) schemes, specifically telling recipients to ‘not operate any programs promoting DEI’.
The European TUC General Secretary Esther Lynch wrote back to request that the US recalls its letter which she says is an unlawful request. She wrote that ‘attempts to re-introduce 1950 style sexism, unequal pay, or discrimination on grounds of disability or because of who an employee chose to have as their family is not in business or worker’s best interests’.
Of course the UK has its own legal framework and the actions taken by the US government do not have a legal impact on companies here, however, in an increasingly difficult economy firms are starting to move towards compliance with the USA’s executive order and we have seen the removal or watering down of DEI commitments from many significant company websites, for example Accenture, BAE systems, BT and law firms White & Case and Freshfields. It is important to note that many of these companies still express a commitment to diversity principles but the roll backs are real.
It is also worth remembering that with the trade deal between UK and India, the government has agreed to allow secondees from India to UK companies on short-term visas, both they and their employers should be exempt from National Insurance contributions. This is a move alleged to cost about £100m in lost revenue to HM Treasury but which also indicates that the government is willing to bend the rules to enable trade deals to get over the line. This could mean danger for the Equality Act protections against discrimination, and we will wait to see how this plays out.
