Tory psychopath wants employers to be fire staff at will.

[ttosca]

Firing People Will Be Easier Under A Tory Government, Says Party Chair Grant Shapps

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Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps said a future Tory government would stop bosses having to invent "disingenuous reasons" to get rid of staff due to outdated employment laws.

Revealing the Tory party's plans for the 2015 election, Shapps said: "In the next Conservative manifesto you will see an attempt to make employment law reflect the realities of modern Britain and proper business rather than a fantasy world where you only have two options and both are completely inadequate for both the employee and the firm."

Shapps cited his own struggles with "crazy" employment laws, saying: "I started a printing company 23 years ago, it still runs to this day, and we always sat there and wondered how it is that when you know that somebody is not working out right for the company, they are just not fitting in to that role, you have to effectively end up coming up with disingenuous reasons why you need to change that role.

"Either you have to say that role itself is now redundant and re-engineer the way the department operates or you have to say that person was so bad at their job that you must fire them, and it's disciplinary and will go on their record.

"That means there are only two ways of dealing with wanting to bring a contract to an end. You either have to pretend the role has gone, or you have to fire the person.

"That is crazy, it doesn't stack up to what really happens out there in the real world.

"We should be honest about this, we should as a country say there should be a way of saying to people 'thank you very much, it hasn't worked out but here's a decent package for you to move on from this role and the support you need to gain another job' so it's not a hire and fire thing either.

"Those are the sorts of changes the Conservatives would like to see that have not been able to introduce in this parliament because of the coalition."

"I'm not in favour of an insecure workforce, I don't think that's a good thing or healthy for the country. I am in favour of making sure that businesses can flourish and we have to have more honesty in employment law in order to get that."

Ian Murray, Labour?s Shadow Business Minister, said: ?Grant Shapps appears to be admitting that he has broken the law by making up 'disingenuous reasons' to sack his own employees.

"The Government should be making it easier to hire people, not easier to fire people - but now the Tory Chairman is raising serious questions about his own record as an employer. He needs to come clean and clarify exactly what he meant by these comments.

?If the only solution the Tories have for sorting out their economic mess is illegally firing workers it?s no wonder people think they?re out of touch.?

Shapps' questioning about employment law followed Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's criticism of zero-hour contracts earlier in the day.

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The Tory chair avoided responding directly, but said: "I do think, as a broader generalisation, that it is the case that we should have employment laws that reflect modern work practices, (and) support employees and employers."

Asked about reports that Buckingham Palace and Cineworld had hired staff on the controversial 'zero-hour' contracts, Clegg said Vince Cable's business department was examining the contracts.

"We do need to look at the effects of zero hour contracts," the LibDem leader said.

"I am a huge advocate of flexibility in the British labour market. It is one of the reasons why we haven't suffered the spike in adult unemployment that we've seen in other developed economies which have had to deal with the consequences of the 2008 crash. I do want to protect employers' rights to employ people flexibly.

"But there has to be a balance. There can be a really worrying level of insecurity if you are an individual employed on a zero-hour contract, where you are told by your employer you will be given a timesheet by Wednesday on how many hours you will work next week and actually you don't get it until Sunday evening, and you then go in to work from 7.30am to 7.30pm and only get paid for five hours.

"For people, particularly with families, who have got to pay bills and have to got to plan - everybody has to plan for what their income is and what they have to pay out - that can cause very intense anxiety and insecurity indeed.

"I want to look at this carefully, but I know that the Business Department is looking at this over the summer to see whether we need to make any adjustments or not. I'm not going to second-guess that process... but I'm very interested in seeing what evidence they come up with."

"We need to get the right balance between flexibility in the labour market, but not at the cost of what I would suggest are unacceptable levels of individual insecurity."

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/31/tories-sackings-easier-shapps_n_3682235.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

The UK already has amongst the weakest labour laws of the EU.

Exactly how being able to lose your job before the end of your contract because your employer wants to get rid of you will not further increase job security is, well, left up to the minds of Tory psychopaths who are completely out of touch with 99% of working adults.

And this cockwomble is my MP. Urgh.

Natasha-

You assume the employee is a poor worker. That's not necessarily the case. The employer may want to fire him or her for any number of reasons - including simply because they want to increase the bottom line.

How the hell can society operate when people go day to day without knowing whether the next day they will have a job or not?

How are the supposed to plan their lives? Plan marriages? Plan a family? Make financial decisions?

It's mind-bogglingly both stupid and psychopathic.

Who the HELL votes for these idiots!?

I think there's two sides to it. Employers would be much more likely to hire new employees more often if they knew they could get rid of them when necessary. I do not know what the answer is. A lot of the ideas of long term employment and hefty redunancy packages are really outdated in todays world and cause a lot of unemployment. They protect the people that are older and richer at the expense of people that are younger and poorer.

Hasn't Shapps already been caught out fibbing about his identity or something, he strikes me as very shifty. Hardly the sort of person you can trust to hire and manage a work force.

A lot of the ideas of long term employment and hefty redunancy packages are really outdated in todays world

who says?

Who decided that "long term employment" was outdated? It wasn't workers. The capitalist bastards squeezed wages, off-shored labour, favoured fixed contracts & agency staff, moaned about the lack of skills because THEY refuse to train their staff and invest in them.

Having SKILLED and MOTIVATED staff is an INVESTMENT, they add value to a business. But the greed of individuals ensures that costs must be reigned in constantly and they make the government and the tax payer responsible for the costs of training people or the individual themselves who run up huge debts to acquire a degree/other qualifications that in no way guarantees of a job.

We had a very motivated, skilled and educated workforce and it isn't the fault of ordinary working people that businesses chose to go elsewhere where labour conditions and employment rights are dismal. We can not compete in the way in which the Tory sociopaths think we should, its a race to the bottom.

Its the clearest indication, if any were needed, that the Tory's are not concerned with what is best for the nation (nationalism is for workers, wheel it out for popular support) but concerned with shoring up capital accumulation and extending their own class interests.

The world changes quickly. Companies that can change quickly will succeed, and companies that stick to the old ways and are inflexible will not.

Would you want to hire someone knowing that you would be responsible for them for life, when all you wanted was a bit of work done?

I liked this bit: '"In the next Conservative manifesto you will see an attempt to make employment law reflect the realities of modern Britain and proper business '!!

Why don't they make criminal law reflect the realities of modern Britain too, while they are about it?

They don't get it do they? You can't change a law just because people break it. You need to stop them breaking it, don't you?

But there it is, as clear as you could possibly want it. The Conservatives are above the law and think they can change it whenever it doesn't 'reflect the realities of modern Britain and proper business' - in other words whenever it gets in the way of big business.

I think you are correct meglet: A fake, or false identity.

"Michael Green"

Former Housing Minister.

The world changes quickly. Companies that can change quickly will succeed, and companies that stick to the old ways and are inflexible will not.

Would you want to hire someone knowing that you would be responsible for them for life, when all you wanted was a bit of work done?

This is a straw-man argument. What people object to is the idea that employers shouldn't even be bound by employment contracts anymore - or that contracts should be revised so that employees can be fired at any time, making them effectively meaningless.

While you are concerned about companies succeeding, do you realise how socially and economically destructive it is for people to have no job security?

Well seeing as we pay his wages, we can start by firing him at will. Wanker.

IOnlyNameChange I totally agree with your point. If companies, mine included, need more staff, they are far more inclined to either take on a contractor or outsource the work than they used to be. Not only does this get around the problem of sacking poor performing staff, but it also bypasses problems that can arise with small companies paying maternity leave etc...

The more complicated and one-sided the government makes the relationship between employers and employees, the less likely employers will be to directly hire employees in the first place. In this instance Grant Schapps is talking sense.

Finally Ttosca, personal attacks such as accusing any and every Tory of being a psychopath/liar/devil incarnate etc, as consistently as you do, cheapens any argument you might be trying to make and makes you come across as an incandescent shrill, cross-eyed with rage and unyielding in your opinions. In your mind you might think that you are a modern day Che Guevara with a toddler, to many of the rest of us you just sound barking mad and more to the left than Marx and Engels!

Mr Pants, what to say? You accuse ttosca of personal attacks and then.........personally attack her. Clever? not.

Of course companies as individual entities in competition with each other would like to pay you less than they pay an Indonesian. They would like you to have a contract not worth the paper it is written on or better still, no contract at all. The effect of many companies behaving in this way actually leads to more failing businesses than if collectively companies paid competitive wages to workers and retained staff.

What happens is that the services and goods produced become cheaper until you get to a point where companies are unable to undercut each other. Of course added to this you have under consumption and lack of demand because workers can not make up a good percentage of the demand for the goods produced. This is another reason why we have Nestle flogging baby milk in the third world at a cost that equates often to two thirds of the monthly salary for a family. It is one thing to exploit cheap labour in poor nations but quite another task to actually generate demand for the products produced.

At the end of the day the state will pick up the bill but Grant and chums don't give a shit, for they have no loyalty beyond lining their pockets and those of their chums.

I'm pretty certain from previous jobs that if someone isn't up to scratch you can get rid of them, you just have to go through the process. Which is there for a damn good reason!!

"Would you want to hire someone knowing that you would be responsible for them for life"

What jobs involve hiring someone then being responsible for someone for life?

Tendency of the rate of profit to fall

raising the rate of exploitation,reduction of wages below the value of labour power

"cheapening the elements of constant capital by various means;
the growth and utilization of a relative surplus population (the reserve army of labour)"

"foreign trade reducing the cost of industrial inputs and consumer goods; and the increase in share capital, which devolves part of the costs of using capital on others"

"demographic factors
consolidation of mature industries into an oligarchy of survivors. Mature industries do not attract new capital because of low returns. Also, mature companies with large amounts of capital invested and brand recognition create barriers to entry against new competitors" (wiki)

If the rate of profit falls investment dries up, this means no new jobs. This in no way justifies offering our labour for less. If anything it simply means we are all fucked and Marx was correct. When change happens it will happen in mature advanced industrialised countries.

Now for those of you who think that people and states are there to do the bidding of business, rather than thinking that all production and economic activity is actually about meeting human needs, need to have your bloody heads read!

Under consumption is a constant, however if we have less income we spend less, this means that there is an even greater tendency for investment to be withdrawn because the risks are higher and returns of course are already diminishing.

Mini, wages are generally a lot less than the value of ones labour. Were it to be the other way around, and your employer consistently paid you and your work colleagues more than you generate, they wouldn't be in business for very long. On top of that you have to factor in the various taxes and costs of complying with government legislation (H&S for example), training, pensions, support infrastructure (how do you determine the value of an HR department for example) and it soon becomes obvious that you don't get remunerated anywhere close to the value of your labour.

Your second point, about static industries, makes no mention of the fact that sometimes we just get better at doing stuff. There are countless examples of automation and machinery replacing physical sweat and muscle (indeed manufacturing of those machines provides further opportunities for jobs and wealth creation). This isn't a capitalist conspiracy, it's common sense.

"Now for those of you who think that people and states are there to do the bidding of business, rather than thinking that all production and economic activity is actually about meeting human needs, need to have your bloody heads read!"

Sorry but this is just wrong. I agree that people and states are not there to do the bidding of business, but likewise, business owes no favours (beyond compulsory taxation) to the state. Likewise, production and economic activity has long since moved beyond "needs" for most areas and is long down the road of the less worthy sounding "wants".

This would be a disaster for women. Even with the current laws thousands of women lose their jobs every year due to becoming pregnant. It would be back to the days when women lost their jobs as standard on settling down with a man or becoming pregnant. Would cause big social problems.

Interested to see what is going to happen to shapps as he has admitted breaking the law. (Clue: nothing)

Also agree with poster up thread. You can sack people at the moment if they don't cut the mustard. You follow a process to show it is fair. Seems reasonable to me. Not sure where this myth that you can't sack people has come from.

"Not sure where this myth that you can't sack people has come from."

I think they are hoping that if they say it enough people will believe it, and then it makes their plans look reasonable.

You can sack people but it's very hard to do so. You can't just sack people because you don't want them working for you anymore.

There is no unfair dismissal right now until you have been employed for 2 years (unless there is sex discrimination) so it is easier than it was to fire someone. Plenty of small businesses are able just to hire the self employed in when they need someone too and that can work well for those businesses. However it is hard and complex to sack someone and perhaps a change in the law might help.

You can sack people if they aren't doing their job.

I don't think being able to sack people without there being a good reason is actually a good idea.