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said a future Tory government would stop bosses having to invent "disingenuous reasons" to get rid of staff due to outdated employment laws.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

Why should people be forced to employ people they don't want working for them anymore? It doesn't benefit anyone.

They aren't. There's this thing called an interview process. And a fair few companies use a trial period.

So an interview that could have taken place decades ago is supposed to be relevent today?

It's the risk of employing someone. You cannot take away people's rights just because you might go off someone.

Many employers are choosing not to take that risk, that's the problem. A lot of our employee legislation is rooted in the past, and the "job for life" culture.

Tbh if an employer is that bothered by employing people who they don't get on with but who do their job well enough not to be disciplined/sacked then they are probably better off not employing anyone anyway.

Tabitha-

Why should people be forced to employ people they don't want working for them anymore? It doesn't benefit anyone.

You mean why should employers be forced to honour contracts, the basis of the entire economic system itself?

Do you want to think about what society would be like if nobody had any idea whether or not they would have work the next day?

Please think this through. How would anyone plan to take out a mortgage? To get married? To choose to raise kids? To make spending and saving decisions? To take out insurance?

Not that I agree with removing protections, but it isn't about them honouring the employment contract. It's about what can be legally enforced in a contract. If it were about honouring the contract then they could just write in that an employee could be let go with x weeks or months notice. Just as you can give notice to your employer and aren't obliged to stay with them for ever.

Jobs for life is a poor way to set up expectations for people, there are no guarantees. Having people think an employer is tied to them once they have a job doesn't encourage the income resilience necessary for things like taking on a mortgage. Being fired is only one of many reasons you can lose a particular job. Expecting jobs to just keep on going the same old, same old is one of the biggest problems modern employers have. Because, in companies that are likely to survive, jobs keep on changing.

Nevertheless I think the current rules help foster better human management practices in firms and make it more important for employers to invest in their staff. And I think that's good for business and employees.

The idea that 'you can't sack people' is tosh. No-one has any statutory rights for the first two years in a job. That's a long time to work without any security. (Bar sex/race etc. discrimination - which makes sense, otherwise tosspots would just sack any women/black people/gay people/disabled people within the first two years of employment.)

Even after that, it is perfectly possible to make people redundant if that job is no longer needed. You just have to be reasonable. Clearly shit employers like Shapps find it hard to get their tiny heads round this. Which is not only unfair on employees, it's bad for reasonable law-abiding employers as well, as they face unfair competition from

Yeah, jobs keep on changing, so employers have to keep on training. Or government does.

If you are a government that wants your economy to have a flexible workforce - good flexible, not Amazon-treating-people-like-shit flexible that ends up costing the taxpayer loads - you need to offer plenty of training and support during that training.

Either via employers or via FE/HE/some form of lifelong learning that is actually achievable for people who have lost their jobs because the economy needs a different type of worker. As in, there is some level of financial support during that training.

Emmeline

Not that I agree with removing protections, but it isn't about them honouring the employment contract.

I was answering Tabitha's question: "Why should people be forced to employ people they don't want working for them anymore? It doesn't benefit anyone."

I'm amazed that there are people arguing for to even further tip the balance in favour of employers against employees.

Let's look at the situation in the UK: We already have amongst the weakest labour laws in europe, and the weakest unions (due to anti-union legislation). British people work the longest hours already, and many already have little or no job security (see recent hoo-ha about zero-hour contracts).

UK corporation tax is already very low by european standards and is soon set to be the lowest in europe.

The average British family is tens of thousands of pounds in debt, and the majority (according to a recent headline - I can find the link...) are struggling to make ends meet.

What strange way of thinking would lead someone to believe that the power balance should be tipped even further towards employers and away from employees?

British businesses has never had it so good.

Why on earth are the people who argue in favour of sucking up to business start paying attention to the working conditions and struggles of the average working family instead of the bottom line of huge multinationals?

Why on earth are the people who argue in favour of sucking up to business start paying attention to the working conditions and struggles of the average working family instead of the bottom line of huge multinationals?

Sorry, I meant:

"Why on earth don't the people who argue in favour of sucking up to business start paying attention to the working conditions and struggles of the average working family instead of the bottom line of huge multinationals?"

I'm dyslexic.

Jobs for life is a poor way to set up expectations for people, there are no guarantees"

Does anyone still believe in that?

Ttosca, we're not just in competition with Europe though.

I am an employment lawyer, I act for both sides. Just about all my employer clients are horrified by the erosion of rights because they actually think they should act decently. They don't want loopholes but the shirt employers do.

Shirt? Shit!

YY, tiger, it's very unfair on decent employers.

Reading the title you could guess exactly whom the OP would be.

I agree with Emmeline on most points.

I also don't think we should be comparing ourselves to the EU whose economies are hardly booming.

I want staff to have job security but it is very very very hard and a long process to go through the process to dismiss on the basis of bad performance. It can take years of tracking and there are almost always loopholes that the employee can fall back on. It's a sad state when it's easier to dismiss someone on the basis of sickness absence or swearing at work than performance and particularly crap for hard working colleagues who get to see poor performers retained. In the end bosses and colleagues often resort to emotional tactics like ignoring staff or making them feel removed from the group which is crazy. I worked for a local authority for 6 years and was told by HR over that time that only one staff member was dismissed then later reinstated. There are lots of public sector organisations scared to dismiss anyone so managers just give up on starting procedures relating to performance knowing that the end result of a dismissal will be futile. How are under performing staff benefitting an organisation or their coworkers? Or should we turn a blind eye because ensuring their mortgage is paid is the most important thing?

So while I believe in job security and employee rights is like to see a situation which supports performance mgmt more, particularly in the public sector.

Sorry correction in my last paragraph: I'd like to see... Not is like to see

In my experience the biggest obstacle to dismissing for performance/capability is failing to take steps in the first place to regularly train, monitor and assess the workforce against measurable criteria and then feed back in appraisals. If an employer can demonstrate that it has provided adequate training and frequently assessed against objective criteria, giving everyone an opportunity to remedy performance issues - as reasonable employers are supposed to do - capability dismissals are not so hard to justify.

I'm not worried about the bottom line of big multi actionable, but employment laws apply equally to small businesses and represent a significant burden.

On the whole, I think we've got the balance about right. Continental employment rights are way too far in favour if employees, and we are seeing the impact. Anyone fancy Spain and its 27% unemployment? A friend of mine has a division in France which is shrinking. They cannot afford to make the MD redundancy because payments woukd be 4-5 times his annual salary. In their Italian division they spend the same as their wages bill on social security, mandatory contributions etc. if you ever had the choice to employ someone there or employ someone in a country with fewer rights, you would be mad to choose there, and this is part of their economic problems.

I have worked for both small and large employers, public and private sector. Ime the best employers are large private sector ones, as they have had the money to do stuff like proper hr, staff development and so on. The worst have been the small and public sector ones. Public sector due to being cash strapped and cut backs and so on. Small employers as they don't understand the law or think it doesn't apply to them and there has been a lot of unfair treatment, bullying and so on, with no hr to sort stuff out.

It is the small employers who need to have these laws I think as they often seem to act badly.

On the idea that you can't sack people, how does that tie in with thousands of women losing their jobs every year because they get pregnant? And people get sacked legitimately all the time. I have known people sacked, and one of dh colleagues got sacked recently and he is highly unionised public sector.

At the moment the existing laws are being flouted by the likes of shapps - he even admits it! So what they need is to be enforced, not weakened.

Time and time and time again research shows that treat your staff well and your business will do well.

It takes a pretty inept and emotionally unintelligent boss to not be able to have honest conversations with their employees about performance etc.

John Lewis does bloody well - look how try treat their staff. Look and learn Tories.