Tuesday 23 July 2013

But Your Chains


Many thanks to Johanna Baxter for using her report back of July’s Labour NEC meeting to remind her readers what’s coming on the 29th of this month.

I can’t imagine The Sun or the Daily Mail will be criticising this direct attack on the interests of the overwhelming majority of their readers.

I also made the point to Ed that whilst the media have spent the past week writing about trade union affiliation they seem to have forgotten the devastating changes that are due to be made to people’s rights at work on the 29th of this month.

Workers who have been unfairly dismissed or discriminated against by their employer, and who seek redress at tribunal, will now be charged for taking that claim to hearing and have no assurance that if their claim is settled they will have their money repaid to them.

Employers will also be able to make ‘offers’ to employees to leave their organisations – without the need for that employer to go through normal dismissal, grievance or performance procedures – through conversations that will later be inadmissible in any future tribunal proceedings.

That is tantamount to giving employers carte blanche to hold ‘car-park conversations’ with anyone they don’t like, pressing them to give up their jobs before they are pushed or dismissed, with the employee having no means of referring to that conversation, or how threatened they felt by it, in any future case.

While ‘bad practice’ in the operation of these conversations is supposed to be prohibited, it will, in many instances, be almost impossible for employees to prove that it has taken place. All of those changes are being introduced after the government has already made it harder for workers to seek redress by increasing the qualification period before they can submit an employment tribunal claim and has cut legal aid for employment issues.

So whilst others review our structures I asked that Ed ensure he talks about the issues facing those working people trade unions represent right now.

Unite have allocated funds so none of its members will have to pay a single penny if they wish to take a bullying boss to a tribunal, and I know other unions are following suit. After the end of July, you cannot afford not to be in a trade union.

4 comments:

  1. And when this long-overdue change is brought in, its about time to scrap John Major's dreadful gold-diggers charter, the "no win-no-fee" claims which brought US-style ambulance-chasing lawyers to Britain, and made our schools and public bodies attempt to ban risk itself.

    It would take someone who can actually remember the days when we were a free country-if there is anyone that old in Parliament.

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  2. I couldn't agree more about no win, no fee. But this is an appalling act on employment rights that no one is now old enough to remember life without.

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  3. I'm not sure I support making employees pay if they win the case-that's preposterous.

    But making it easier to sack people encourages businesses to hire people- thus increasing employment.

    The experience of John Howard in Australia proves this-he kick started an economic revival over there by scrapping many workers rights.

    Our current plethora of employee rights (plus the National Insurance contributions, a direct tax on employment) deter many businesses from taking on extra staff.

    Surveys show extended maternity rights (which can bankrupt a small fledgling firm) are putting small businesses off hiring women altogether.

    Is that what we want?

    Since a free country can't force businesses to take on more workers, we surely have to make it easier for them to do so.

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  4. You cannot possibly still believe that. You are like the old Tankies. Only far more dangerous.

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