King's Speech-worker's rights..

[CurlewKate]

Apparently, the government is proposing legislation that will make protection from unfair dismissal a day one right- not as it currently is and kicking in after 2 years. Huge if true.....

If you are advocating for PR, I'm totally with you.

Yes that makes sense re contractual arrangement. That would still apply

Under the current law probationary periods don’t mean anything. They really just set expectations. You don’t have to have a specific probationary period in your contract (and fail it) for them to let you go for underperforming in the first six weeks, for example. They can do that anyway. Likewise, you could pass your probationary period and they could let you do a week later because they don’t like your face 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway. Day 1 right is a grifter’s charter. Stick in a claim and it’s cheaper for the company to pay you off than defend it, even if they haven’t done anything wrong.

Make it 6 months to a year. Far more sensible.

It will keep us employment lawyers busy though..

The tribunals won't be able to cope.

Under proposed new law if they get rid of you if you fail your probationary period which is in a contract what’s possible? Is it ok

I get what you’re saying sort of but not sure what’s changing

As an employer that was my first thought.

But on reflection here is my second thought.

It's protection from unfair dismissal - which to be fair is the right thing to do. What employers need to do is ensure that any dismissal is fair. And that is what we have to do after two years. So it just means we have to act properly from day one. Good employers shouldn't have a problem with this.

What it will do is change how we recruit. We will need to put more in up front to ensure that we hire the right candidates. Just now I am far more willing to take recruitment risks, roll the dice and try people out. Because I know that if it doesn't work out then the risks of dismissing them are low. I will be less willing to take that risk. So our recruitment will need to be more rigorous.

The tribunals can barely cope now. It’s 2 years from claim to trial.

The problem is, as highlighted by some above - even if the employer has done nothing wrong, there is absolutely nothing preventing ANY employee who has been let go, bringing a claim and costing the employee hundreds or thousands if they decide to defend. The claimant pays nothing. This will of course mean that employers never would take a risk, because this puts the whole risk of litigation on the employer - whether they do the right thing or not.

But in reality there would have to be probationary periods. Even the most inexperienced politician would see that doing away with that would grind business to a halt.

I haven’t read much about the new law. What I’m wondering is if it means that to get rid of someone for underperforming in their probationary period, you’d have to go through some kind of performance management (or disciplinary) process in order to dismiss them fairly, rather than just a quick “look, it’s not really working out” conversation

This is the thing - it doesn’t matter if you follow the correct procedure - it will still cost you thousands of pounds to prove that at tribunal.

Full disclosure - we have a claim against us at the moment and we are confident of success because we followed to the letter what our employment lawyer told us to do, and followed ACAS guidelines. Yet the claim has been going on for 18 months and has cost us around £8000 to defend. We have even made an offer to settle to prevent any more costs, but there is no reason for her to accept this as this isn’t costing her anything!

To go to trial will be around £20k all in, and for a claim that we are 99% certain to win. But even if we win, we lose financially.

@Startingagainandagain

It always amazes me when people see workers' rights has a bad thing...

It needs to be done carefully though. Ways in which rights that are 'too strong' can hurt workers:

i) incentivise automation (fewer jobs)
ii) disincentivize taking a chance on someone (ex prisoners, young people, people whose face doesn't fit)
iii) disincentivize hiring people holding particular rights (women of child bearing age)
iv) sends jobs to other countries instead
v) leave unsuitable workers in place (the Met's struggle to fire incompetent, corrupt or violent officers)
vi) benefit existing workers at the expense of job-seekers.

That’s it exactly.

Congratulations. Most small companies couldn’t afford the professional hr/legal advice to put someone through a formal process if it wasn’t working out (which you can’t test until you’ve committed to employ them).

and as I’ve said, for public sector orgs with tens of thousands of staff this will divert a lot of money away from patient care/services to manage and defend legal cases.

So the probationary period would continue to be meaningless I suppose?

I’m going through an ET now. My ET1 was accepted in June, and I’ve already got a date for my final hearing(s) in December.

Maybe waiting times are area specific?

Yup. Unless it confers contractual terms around notice, pay or training.

I assume so @NameChange101113 - our claim took 12 months just to get to case management conference and trial is booked for next March.

It’s a bad idea. It will slow the labour market and make it less flexible.

I say this an employee who likes to change jobs every 3 to 5 years.

Its intriguing how many employees are not supportive of better rights for employees.

Some of us are just thinking of the bigger picture and the knock on effect this will have on the job market.

intriguing how? Many people recognize the benefits to them of having a balance between the rights of employers and employees in terms of economic growth and job availability. As well as matters such as availability and affordability of public and private services.

Having draconian workers rights doesn’t result in some great utopia for workers (as we have seen in many many countries around the world). It results in high unemployment (especially among the young), low growth and poor services.

That is one key issue with allowing people to bring claims too easily- they will bring them and use them as leverage to get a settlement as that’s cheaper for the employer than fighting it.

If I had to deal with a long and complicated dismissal process every time I took someone on, I just wouldn’t hire people from the U.K.

I don't understand what this means. Are you suggesting that you would employ a foreign worker and treat them differently to a UK worker? You do realise that they'd be covered by UK law irrespective of where they're from.

Secondly you could take the inexperienced person on under a probationary period.