A proposal to make the new Fair Work Agency more effective: Closer partnerships with worker organisations – by Manoj Dias-Abey

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On 7 April 2026, the Fair Work Agency (FWA) officially launched as an executive agency of the Department of Business and Trade. The FWA brings together three existing enforcement bodies—the National Minimum Wage Unit, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, and the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority—as well as the body created in 2016 to foster greater cooperation between these entities, the Office of the Director of Labour Market Enforcement. The new enforcement body is responsible for ensuring compliance with the majority, but not all, of Britain’s employment laws. The Health and Safety Executive, which is responsible for the enforcement of health and safety laws, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with oversight over the Equality Act 2010, will continue to operate as separate non-departmental public bodies. Given the widespread non-compliance with employment laws in the British labour market, the new labour inspectorate will have its work cut out for it.

The consolidation of the fragmented system of labour inspectorates has long been an aspiration. In fact, the previous Conservative government proposed a ‘Single Enforcement Body’, but never made the arrangements which would have created such an entity. The FWA goes beyond the Single Enforcement Body proposal in some respects; for example, the FWA will have a role to play in enforcing holiday pay and Employment Tribunal awards. Having a combined body responsible for enforcing employment rights offers several advantages, including providing workers with a clear and identifiable body to approach in the event of a suspected violation, and allowing the inspectorate to make more efficient use of resources by coordinating enforcement activity. The current government has made the FWA a key plank of the Employment Rights Act 2025, arguing that it “provides an opportunity to move beyond structural silos and towards a regulatory model which reflects the wider objective of creating a clearer, more coherent enforcement system.”

Many hoped that the government’s decision to place the establishment of the FWA at the centre of the Employment Rights Act 2025 signalled a stronger commitment to enforcing employment rights. Some early indications hint that this hope may be misplaced. In a ‘strategic steer’ issued to the FWA for the next one-year transitional period, the Department of Business and Trade listed the reduction of regulatory burdens on business as the number one priority for the new enforcement body. The other priorities listed include intelligence and data, public awareness and stakeholder engagement, and thought leadership. Understandably, trade union leaders and worker advocates have reacted with dismay, noting that ensuring workers can effectively claim their rights is absent from the list. Concern is undoubtedly amplified by the fact that labour enforcement has been allowed to deteriorate to such a parlous state, as many of the constituent bodies suffered swingeing funding cuts during the austerity years, resulting in Britain having one of the lowest numbers of labour inspectors in the OECD.

We should not, however, overstate the significance of these transitional priorities, which are likely intended to soothe a skittish business community. As Ruth Dukes and David Whyte have recently argued in a briefing for the Institute of Employment Rights, the real proof will be in whether the agency is properly resourced, whether inspectors are given a mandate to proactively uncover labour rights violations, and whether prosecutors are given the leeway to pursue non-compliant employers robustly.

One area in which the FWA is likely to be an improvement over its constituent bodies is in the degree to which worker advocates are involved in setting the strategic direction of enforcement. The work of the FWA is to be guided by an Advisory Board consisting of three trade union members, three employer-side members, and three independent members. The members of the Advisory Board have been appointed, and thus far, the trade union and independent members appear to represent a good cross-section of knowledge and expertise.

It is noteworthy that one of the Advisory Board members is the head of a migrant advice service. Besides trade unions, there are many other civil society actors that could profitably be enlisted in the enforcement process. Here, as in other domains, civil society refers to the heterogeneous group of organisations that are normatively and institutionally independent of the state and motivated to act for reasons other than profit. In the employment context, there are a range of organisations that are involved in representing the interests of workers, such as advice/resource centres, ethnic community organisations, and other charities working with vulnerable or precariously employed worker populations. It is welcome that the government has recognised this fact.

While adopting a ‘social partnership’ model in the Advisory Board of the FWA is a positive development, the FWA should not stop there. Partnerships with civil society could be embedded in all aspects of enforcement. Labour enforcement can either be ‘reactive’ in the sense that enforcement bodies wait for workers to come forward with complaints, or ‘proactive’ in that enforcement bodies will go out into the field to detect violations by conducting audits and inspections of employers. There are three overlapping bodies of literature—regulatory studies, industrial relations, and labour law—that have considered the merits of involving civil society bodies in the enforcement process. These literatures find that when it comes to reactive forms of enforcement, civil society organisations can inform workers about their statutory rights, help workers prepare their claims, and guide them through the complaints-resolution process once a complaint has been lodged. Equally, when enforcement bodies are determining which workplaces and industries to target for inspections, civil society organisations can provide intelligence about instances and patterns of non-compliance and help regulators stay abreast of emerging organisational and work practices. Given the large number of enterprises that could potentially be inspected, such intelligence is vital for strategic prioritisation.

The level of funding provided to the FWA is likely to be decisive. The Government has indicated that funding will increase by roughly 25%, but this is unlikely to be sufficient either to restore previous levels of resourcing, or to meet the additional demands posed by the scale of non-compliance. One way for the FWA to extend its reach despite these constraints is to work more closely with civil society actors. Civil society organisations possess a range of non-substitutable capacities that the FWA could deploy to good effect, including relationships of trust with hard-to-reach populations and detailed knowledge of practices within specific sectors. In the longer term, the FWA should consider providing financial support to these organisations on the basis that such funding is likely to generate a multiplier effect. In any event, more government funding will be critical.

In a recent article for the Industrial Law Journal (available open access), I have argued that the FWA should be looking to embed partnerships with civil society organisations right across all enforcement functions. In this regard, we can learn much from overseas jurisdictions. In my article, I review three case studies from the United States and Australia which illustrate the benefits of labour inspectorates establishing close partnerships with civil society organisations and how these might operate in practice. In brief, the three case studies are:

• In San Francisco, the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE) has an agreement with the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) to provide outreach services, worker training, consultation and referral services to its constituents. Under the agreement, the OLSE provides funds for the CPA to carry out this work, and in exchange, the CPA must commit to carrying out a specified number of worker consultations annually and referring a certain number of employment law complaints per quarter. The CPA is able to leverage the trust that it has built with this population over a long period of time to improve rights consciousness amongst these workers. It also performs an effective triage role, identifying cases suitable for referral.
• In California, the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) works closely with a community organisation called the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund (MCTF) to gain first-hand knowledge of the complex structure of the janitorial industry. In the past, not only has the MCTF been able to provide information about how the industry was organised through multi-tiered supply chains, but it has also helped inspectors obtain granular information about payment practices to assist in gathering evidence of underpayment. 
• In Australia, accredited union officials can enter workplaces to hold discussions with employees or investigate suspected violations of rights and entitlements. The Fair Work Ombudsman (Australia’s equivalent of the FWA) also has the power to appoint workplace advocates as ‘assistants’ to carry out inspections, which has the effect of endowing assistants with all of the powers of an FWO inspector. While these rights are set out in legislation, they are underutilised in practice. However, a recent effort by the Fair Work Ombudsman to embed ‘tripartism’ in enforcement could see these provisions being applied more widely.

These case studies point to the way that the FWA could seek to work with civil society actors in a deeper and more sustained way. If the FWA were to move in this direction, several local adaptations will be necessary. The first step will be to map the field to determine the range of civil society organisations that could profitably be enlisted in the enforcement process. The next steps would be to set up small scale collaborations, taking an experimental and pragmatic approach. At the conclusion of these experiments, if both parties believe the relationship to be mutually beneficial, the FWA should seek to formalise these to ensure continuity despite inevitable personnel changes and shifting political priorities.

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(Suggested citation: M Dias-Abey, A proposal to make the new Fair Work Agency more effective: Closer partnerships with worker organisations, UK Labour Law Blog, 6 May 2026 available at https://uklabourlawblog.com/)