Conservative governments are usually inclined towards attacking employment rights. It seems Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition governments are no different.
Vince Cable's business department is consulting on changes to the employment tribunal system (see: http://www.bis.gov.uk/Consultations/resolving-workplace-disputes?cat=open ).
Pesky things, employment tribunals - they allow workers to exercise their hard-won rights!
So why dont we discourage workers from doing this by introducing a charge to access justice through tribunals? Well, that's exactly what the government is planning!
But why stop there? Well, they dont. They also propose increasing the time you have to be employed before being able to take an unfair dismissal claim from 1 year to 2 years. Genius! The government's consultation document indicates that will deny access to justice to about 4,000 workers every year.
Today it's employment tribunals, elements in the government are already making noises about the right to strike, who knows when they will look to challenge that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
Completely agree: these are dreadful proposals taking us back to the 80s. What is worse is the reasons the Tories and LDs give for bringing them in do not even link to what they are talking about doing - simply demonstrating that this is a purely ideological move, nothing to do with economic efficiency and absolutely nothing to do with social justice.
Totally agree - it's a sop to the employer lobby rather than a measured policy announcement. The idea that disallowing unfair dismissal claims until workers have been in post for two years will boost employment is farcical. In the meantime our hard-won rights are being attacked.
Post a Comment