No credible non-political basis for the Government's changes to employment law

 

As lawyers, we can’t help but say: before you change something, look long and hard at the evidence. After all if it isn’t broken, why fix it?

 

What is now amazing us is that the Government’s own evidence indicates there are no sound, solid or non-political reasons for changing the current employment laws we have in this country.

 

For example, according to the BIS Employment Regulation Report for September 2012, UK employment regulation was already in ‘good shape’ before any changes were made.

 

Vince Cable admitted as much in November 2011 when he said, “the UK has one of the most effective and lightly regulated labour markets among developed economies”.

 

The BIS Response to the ‘No Fault Dismissals’ Consultation goes even further than this - identifying that the UK has less employment protection than the BRICS economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – and other developing countries.

 

Yes, that’s right - the Government itself believes we currently have less ‘red tape’ and employment law protection than the world’s fastest growing and newly emerging economies – and that’s before most of the proposed changes – watering down TUPE, bringing in ET fees, scrapping equality questionnaires, removing protection from third party harassment, cutting unfair dismissal compensation by possibly 2/3rds, bringing in ‘employee owner’ contracts etc - come in. Those changes are not expected till 2013.

 

It seems that all external data (largely covering the period before the Government changes began!) support the Government’s evidence:

 

-  Employment Tribunals claims are down 15% nationally.

 

-  The OECD says the UK is already the 3rd least regulated and cheapest labour market (2008) behind only Canada and US.

 

-  The recent World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report cited UK’s existing flexibility as to why it moved up from 10th to 8th place in its global rankings.

 

-  The World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ rankings of 183 countries shows the UK was already 7th in the world in 2011 for ‘ease of operating’ behind only Singapore 1^st, Hong Kong 2^nd, New Zealand 3^rd, USA 4^th, Denmark 5^th and Norway 6^th.

 

So why change things? There seems to be no financial or economic need to do so - and the more the Government changes employment law, the more confused workers and businesses are about their respective rights and obligations - creating more, not less uncertainty.

 

Regardless of this, the Government seems set on a race to the bottom. Many European economies are required to amend employment regulation as part of IMF and European financial support conditions but we seem to be racing to beat them to become one of the world’s worst places to work in terms of rights and protection.

 

 

David Sorensen - Partner

 

 

For further information on Employment Rights, please visit our website or call 0113 245 0733 and ask to speak with our Employment Rights team.

 

 

 

Retirement? What Retirement?

I think we are all slowly coming to realise that with the rising costs of living, increase in university fees and the like, we’ll all be needing to work longer in the future. Also, with improving health and people living longer, many want to work and not retire. With the recent removal of the default retirement age of 65, it’s got to be a good thing that employees will be able to choose to work beyond 65 if they wish to. 


A recent survey of employers shows this. It indicates that the majority of employers are doing without a default retirement age. The survey of senior HR professionals in the UK, reveals, among other things, that only 3% of employers intend to keep a specific retirement age, 86% of employers are letting employees over the age of 65 continue in the same role and nearly half of employers are considering flexible working arrangements for over 65s. 

That sounds positive, but on the other hand, only 11% of employers recognise the potential benefit of retaining experienced employees more easily.
What it does show is a shift in ‘mind set’ which means older employees will find it easier to remain working for their employer well after they reach 65.

- David Sorensen, Partner

For further information on Employment Rights, please visit our website or call 0113 245 0733 and ask to speak with our Employment Rights team.