Labour are going to crash the economy/jobs market.

Labour have yet to prove their incompetence levels to be at at the stratospheric levels of tories .. do you look at facts or does your ideology blind you ?

These type of comments are exactly what I was referring to. So, we should accept having incompetent idiots in charge now because we can compare them to incompetent idiots in charge previously and say these ones haven't yet shown themselves to be quite as bad? Even though they are ignoring all of the obvious things they could and should be doing to improve things for citizens of the UK in the long term?

So depressing.

If only Liz Truss were back to give us more of that strong, steady, informed leadership we experienced all too briefly.

Or Boris Johnson and the others who, as we know, would never accept a freebie.

@Batmanisaplaceinturkey
Do you have direct experience of running an independent coffee shop, a plumbers merchant, a cobblers, or a florist? Or is this just opinion based on what you think about Labour in general?

It's a published Bill, the detail is yet to be hashed out through the Parliamentary process. There will be Amendments.

Establishing employment rights for new hires may well stabilise the labour market for small businesses. Many small businesses in retail and hospitality struggle to recruit because the work is so insecure. Many B2C service businesses have long established workarounds to avoid giving anyone employment rights - most hairdressing and beauty businesses, for example.

I can see this is descending into the same pathetic Labour vs Tories nonsense again. The Conservatives were a disaster and wrecked what was left of the economy after the GFC and ever since. That doesn't justify Labour also ignoring all of the big issues that need resolving to have a hope in hell of improving things.

Measuring what Labour are doing by what the insane Tories did is a very low bar. Most countries demand more from their leaders than choosing between two sets of incompetent idiots.

Should we not be holding our politicians to account and comparing them to the standards of leadership in other countries where things actually work and the state generally acts in the best interests of its citizens?

Contractors already have less rights, so the distinction between employees & contractors remains the same as it does in places like Norway. Which doesn't have less rights for employees but rather the opposite.

So what did you make of Liz actually crashing the economy? This is just factless speculation.. employees have enough rights? You are so out of touch with the reality for a lot of working people ..

"Labour are going to crash the economy/jobs market."

Nope.

The Tories did that when they caused the 20 odd percent inflation by their "dash for growth" budget in the early 70s.

The Tories did that by trashing the economy in the early 80s deliberately to destroy town and communities.

The Tories did that withe Lawson's reckless budget in 87/88 that caused double digit inflation

The Tories did that when they followed that up with a huge slump in 91/92/93 - their second recession of that administration.

The Tories did they when they humiliatingly had to crash sterling out of the ERM in 93.

The Tories did that with their pointless and harmful "austerity" under Osborne and Cameron after Brown and Darling had lead the world in recovery and mitigation of the GFC - caused by the Tories' friends in banking and finance ofc.

The Tories did that when the clown Truss did what she did when those idiots voted her in for those 40 odd days.

And the Tories did that when they wasted billions and billions of £ on covid and the contracts with their mates and the shambolic administration of recovery loans and the covid app.

That's a quick and incomplete list just off the top of my head of why your perspective and original point is completely wrong.

The Tories are clueless on the economy as experienced by ordinary people and have repeatedly demonstrated that - see above. The Labour Party are trying to fix the mess we're in.

Exactly the same arguments were spread by Tories when the Blair government introduced the National Minimum Wage. The opposite happened. Economy thrived.

But at least 2 tier, new gear, no idea Keir will have snuffed £130,000 of freebies, billionaire Taylor Swift got £150,000 of unnecessary police protection and Sue Gray has a seat in the House of Lords.

Instead we have a Government that was even contemplating penalising pension saving (when UK savings rates are already among the lowest in the developed world). What do they think pension funds do with invested money? A very strange way indeed to stimulate economic growth and investment.

There seems to be no joined up thinking whatsoever and no understanding of the very obvious fact that tax policies etc affect people's decisions and behaviour.

Where are the innovative policies to support and grow SMEs in key growth sectors? Where is the rationalisation of the income tax rates/ cliff edges? Where are the plans to enforce education laws, provide appropriate specialised schools to foster the varying talents the modern economy requires and link education properly with industry to provide high quality technical apprenticeships etc? Where is the support for start-ups and the investment grants to develop the technologies of the future? Where are the reforms to make it easier for smaller enterprises to raise capital so they aren't all sold off to huge international competitors? Why are large chunks of our energy, water and infrastructure run for profit by companies owned by foreign states so that they can subsidise these services for their own citizens while we receive sub-standard services at exhorbitant cost? What's their plan to close the trade deficit so we stop importing inflation due to reliance on imports of essential goods like food and fuel? What's their plan for water and food and energy security as the climate change issue bites? What are they doing to reform healthcare into the far superior models elsewhere in Europe with better health outcomes? What are they going to do about the shambles that is SEN provision in UK schools and lack of any suitable provision for children with different needs? What's their strategic plan for exports given their inexplicable refusal to rejoin the SM and CU and that the UK cannot fund itself without plugging the self-inflicted trade deficit? How do they intend to address the UK state pension and public sector pension ponzi schemes that cannot be sustained, like Australia did successfully decades ago? How do they plan to increase the UK birth rate given the importing immigrants will be nigh on impossible in 30yrs time given birth rates are dropping off a cliff everywhere outside sub-Saharan Africa?

These are the questions that need to be answered. Their only answer so far is tumbleweed accompanied by attempted distractions with trivial things that will make not one bit of difference to the UK's long-term prospects.

Decent employers won’t be worried about Workers rights

I’m currently job hunting and there is barely anything around locally to me (searching 25 mile radius)

I haven’t known the job market to look
like this since about 2009ish when I had to relocate to London just to find a job and survive…

No idea what’s happening and why though. Not here for a political fight just my own observation!

Too long we have been led by Capitalism .. and where had it got us .. low wages, low skill, high cost of living, huge amount of money being paid from the public purse to fund high payouts for shareholders, recession, broken public services, polluted rivers

This isn't because of capitalism. Economies in prosperous European countries that used to be our direct comparators but are fast pulling away on PPP and standard of living have none of these issues but are still capitalist economies. They also, mostly, have stronger workers rights. What they do have is proper regulation that is enforced (not the likes of the Environment Agency, Ofsted etc who do nothing to enforce regulation therefore resulting in a wild west free for all of law breaking in their respective industries); proper long-term industrial strategies; coherent tax systems without arbitrary cliff-edges, a far broader tax base where everyone contributes and most services are universal not subject to arbitrary limits and therefore everyone feels they have both responsibility for and benefits from the system; and haven't decided to leave the most successful and prosperous trading block in the world resulting in a compounding loss of 4% of GDP.

Although the employment rights from day 1 thing is all very well intentioned, it will lead to employers being reluctant to take people on, having even lengthier more convoluted hiring processes than now and probably find a way around it by sourcing labour through self employed routes. So less rights in the long run

Will it? Demand creates jobs in the economy, not employers. I'm guessing that Labour's plans for investment are aimed at generating that demand. I'm not convinced they'll be ambitious enough though.

YABU

HTH

I remember that when the Minimum Wage was going to cause a load of business to go bust (it didn’t)

Workers should have rights, and should be protected. They should also be paid a proper wage - why do we, as taxpayers, need to pay benefits to people who work full time, so Tesco etc can pay their shareholders more ?

Too long we have been led by Capitalism .. and where had it got us .. low wages, low skill, high cost of living, huge amount of money being paid from the public purse to fund high payouts for shareholders, recession, broken public services, polluted rivers

The current system isn’t working, so quite right we should try sometime else. The first responsibility of any government should be the people.

The NI increase in employer contributions is a concern (the rights, I agree with). I did have a little resigned chuckle, along with a big sigh, when on the same BBC homepage, it mentioned the NI increase (for employers), and then had a news article about the BoE being pressured to cut interest rates quicker, due to the slowing of wage growth.
Higher NI contributions will surely not help wage growth? Employers will not all be in a position to increase both wages and NI contributions. I doubt that simply lowering interest rates will be the best solution either.

At some level there was an impact: NMW for a lot of employers simply became the ceiling of what they would pay and reduced competition in the market. It also coincided with a floodgate of cheap labour from the newly ascended EU countries which kept wages low, and the tax credit regime which heavily subsidised all these poor wages. We’re still feeling the impact of that legacy now with long term depressed wages and employers still reluctant to pay more than NMW for many jobs.

They're doing what I would expect from them, and this is why I voted for them. Workers rights are important.

So do I. I had a part time bar job at the time, and I remember the ranting and raving about how 'we'll have to shut!', because it meant the greedy, lazy cunt would have to pay us more than £2 an hour.

The pub is still open.