Watered down workers protection

[PropertyD]

Am I missing something- why on earth would someone want a workers right bill that gives them the right to claim for unfair dismissal from DAY 1?

I know it’s been cancelled but just why would it have been put in the first place?

Six months sounds about right. An employer should be able to sack an employee from hell quickly.

It's ridiculous. As an employee, I don't want day 1 protections in force, because I don't want to be saddled with inadequate colleagues.

But they were going to get in anyway. They didn't need to appease the unions.

It’s not just the right to claim unfair dismissal from the first day, the whole bill has been watered down.

Sharon Graham of Unite calls it “a shell of its
former self”.

The original bill put forward in the manifesto was never going to be delivered. It sent a message to voters, it appeased the Unions, who are most probably now furious. Has there been a statement yet from Angela Rayner? There will be in time, I guess.

Oh and let’s not forget business, who Rachel Reeves is bending over backwards reassure.

Again, Labour voters were lied to.

My friend is manager at a large well known diy store, the unsuitable new recruits usually dont even manage the min 4 hour first shift...just walk out so new laws dont apply !

Do you regularly unfairly dismiss your employees?

And they would still have been able to if they did it fairly.

Day one protection is an open invitation to people who just want to cause an issue for the employer - revenge or spite. They could engineer an issue and then tie the employer up in an expensive legal fight.

It’s a huge administrative burden to sack someone. That’s reasonable because employing someone is a responsibility which should be taken seriously. However, if you hire someone totally inappropriate for a job and it’s clear within the first few weeks, it’s madness to have to give them a series of warnings, put them on a performance management plan etc. before being able to dismiss them. It would create a massive barrier to taking on new staff. I think 2 years was too long for these protections to kick in but 6 months seems like an ok compromise.

And huge costs and administrative burdens to defend a tribunal claim even if it's bollocks. A minimum period before you can claim unfair dismissal at least gives employers a chance to weed out problems.

I’m also loving the fact that as a sop, they are lifting the cap on compensation for unfair dismissal. Duh - this compensation is based on your net lost earnings until you can reasonably be expected to find another job, and this means that the only people who will benefit from this change will be high earners - eg private sector execs and high earning civil servants. Only a tiny minority of claimants ever suffer recoverable lost earnings that come anywhere close to the statutory cap - certainly none of your ‘ordinary working people’. The only thing this wholly performative change to appease stupid back bench mps will do is encourage more unrepresented claimants to bring totally unrealistic ET claims, waste everyone’s time and end up v disappointed. Ridiculous.

You sound ridiculous, intelligence level in the toilet

The key here is UNFAIR dismissal. Not dismissal itself. Ie dismissal for a discriminatory reason. Why would being dismissed because you’re pregnant/black/old etc be unfair on month 6 but not unfair on day 1?

I feel I’m pointing out the obvious here? I’m constantly surprised by the level of simple mindedness here…

The role I’m in people are literally dismissed unfairly on a daily basis. Which actually does the business no good whatsoever because there’s no stability people come in looking for the same person that they’d like to deal with twice because that person has all the knowledge about their situation and of course the person has been unfairly dismissed.
How people can live and plan their lives like this I don’t know when does it come in?

firefumes. Errr no. If you are dismissed for a whole variety of reasons, including pregnancy, asking to take mat leave and all forms of discrimination, you are already protected from day 1. The problem here is a lack of understanding of existing rights, rather than a need to add new ones. Now is definitely not the time to be deterring job creation. The whole bill should be put on the shelf for a long time. Only university academics with no knowledge of the workplace can believe this is how you build growth.

Wasn't it Raynor who led this policy? So now she is no longer Deputy they could change it to something workable.

Young workers are already struggling to get jobs and have to complete ridiculous levels of assessment before a job offer, so a Day1 protection would make employers even more risk adverse so recruitment would have more hurdles.

Had this gone through I would only take on those who could demonstrate a solid work history as otherwise the risk/threat of tribunals would be high

Unfair dismissal should never be tolerated in my opinion but during your probationary period you should be allowed to be let go because you don’t fit the role you were hired for thus no good at job, fine to let go, pregnant, not allowed to let go.

“err no” yourself.

The exact part the OP was yapping about was “day 1 unfair dismissal”. It’s right there in the OP and the chain I quoted.

You are not making sense. The proposal under discussion is extending protection to day one for reasons other than those that are already automatically unfair. Dismissing someone for pregnancy, discrimination, assertion of statutory rights, etc., is already unfair from day one.

@Firefumes, your contempt for the level of the debate and the opinion of others is palpable. I would go as far as to rude!

“You sound ridiculous, intelligence level in the toilet”

“The exact part the OP was yapping about”

Is this how you speak to people? What’s up?

YANBU- it's a good end result.

Of course all the headlines and interviews are about 'u- turns'. Well done labour for being adults and working through a good compromise- they've also kept the other day 1 protections in. The tories didn't have as many 'u-turns' because they didnt try and help anyone in the first place! Also, I hate the phrase u-turn- if you keep most of the actions in a bill and delay one of them that's hardly a u-turn, its a slight course correction at most!

Even with all the crap communication and misjudgement we are seeing now, it's a drop in the ocean compared ro what came before.

Of course they needed to appease the unions. The labour government and the unions are an informal coalition.

The Unions are the main financial backers of the manifesto campaign. So appease them they do!

I am a union member but I don't have any wish for my employer to have to hang on to a useless new employee, it just makes my working life harder.

The unions aren’t happy with the manifesto break. And as pp said they’re a major donor. Or perhaps were.

It was a proposal put together by someone who had no understanding of the legal mechanisms of unfair dismissal or probationary periods. They immediately said that while it would be a day 1 right, there would be something in the first 6-9 months, which was always doomed to fail. You can’t have a different standard of fairness apply, and so the only thing that ever made sense under the existing legal framework was for it to kick in later than day 1.

I got let go along with colleagues and was fuming they’re allowed to do that
they recruited me then let us go after 8 weeks. One woman had only been there 3 weeks!
saying they were over staffed