Employment Related Law
The regulations in this category are designed to protect employees from unfair practices and ensure that employees and employers are clear about their rights and responsibilities in the workplace.
For ease of commenting we have broken these regulations into the following four areas:
GET RID OF ALL EMPLOYMENT LAW GOVERNMENTS NEED TO CREATE THE CONDITIONS THAT ALLOW BUINESS TO THRIVE. EMPLOYMENT LAW HOLDS BACK JOB AND WEALTH CREATIONComment Tags: jobs
As an employer i find a lot of these posts frustrating.
Employees have NO IDEA how hard it is to run a business.
Employers to not get the luxuries that employees do. If the business is not doing well we do not get paid the minimum wage. If a female business employer decides to have a child, there is no maternity pay for her as she is not earning. If an employer has to work overtime in order to earn enough money to pay for food and rent, there is no extra bonus or overtime, its just what needs to be done.
There is no union for employers, so if a staff member is troublesome or does not comply with the employment contract, the business has no chance on earth of sueing them.
Most of the people on here who say ‘everything is fine leave it as it is’ need to try becoming an employer if they think its that easy.
I know there are some bad businesses out there who do not comply with the current legislation and do take advantage of people, which is why everything was introduced in the first place. Punish them!!!! Do not punish the extremely hard working people who try to do best by people. Who struggle beyond belief in order to comply with everything.
At least make it equal, give employers the same luxuries as employees.
When someone takes a lifestyle choice to start a family – it is that – a lifestyle choice. No more paying pregnant women to go to the Doctors (open the Doctors in the evening if its that important!!), No holding jobs open for those who choose to exempt themselves to have children and no paying money for nothing (holiday pay, pensions etc etc) to those on maternity leave (as maternity leave should not exist). If you exempt yourself – re-apply when you are good and ready to come back into the workplace!
There is no minimum wage for the small employer who is investing their money and acting as unpaid tax collectors for the revenue, usually working longer hours than their staff for less remuneration, but because it is what they want to do. Do away with the minimum wage and ban social mobile phones in the workplace, then we might get our money’s worth.
Any change to curent employment rights, sunday opening, mimimun wage etc would be detriment to the rights of all who are lucky to be employed at present.To remove these rights and many others would result in the return of uncaring and unscrupulous employers. Any legislation that removes these rights would be a crime.Comment Tags: employee employement rights.
make it equal for all agesComment Tags: minimum wage
The minimum wage needs to be kept to safegaurd employees. Needs to increase more inline with true inflation rises as do wages in general.
The Gangmasters Licensing Authority, and the ten laws that go with it, should be scrapped altogether.
Its purpose could be achieved much more effectively by redirecting its money to the other agencies whose laws it enforces (HMRC, HSE, UKBA, DWP, VOSA etc.) and advice agencies (e.g. Citizens Advice) who help workers enforce their own rights.
Example of the former: The GLA enforces tax law against gangmasters. When a gangmaster is suspected of breaking tax law, the GLA asks HMRC if the gangmaster might be breaking tax law. A GLA inspector than arranges an inspection, and often takes a tax inspector along. Afterwards, the GLA inspector’s findings are referred to HMRC. Eventually the GLA might take action against the gangmaster because “HMRC have told us you are breaking tax law”. Exactly where has the GLA added value here? Why not cut out the GLA-middleman?
Example of the latter: Most CABx have no employment rights advisers. There is very little funding available for it. Workers are advised to ring their problem with a gangmaster through to the GLA in areas where no free employments rights advice is available. The 80-90 GLA officials last year claim to have dealt with 800-900 exploited workers between them. A single CAB employment rights adviser (on an annual salary of under £20k, supervising as salaried CAB advisers usually do a set of part-time volunteers doing similar work) can easily handle the cases of 800-900 exploited workers in a year.
The regulatory burden – and GLA cost and staff numbers – could easily be reduced to a fraction of its current levels. Example: most licensing authorities work in a common sense way: An inspector comes out, looks at the applicant/ licence holder, and then makes a decision to grant/ refuse/ cancel a licence. Compare that to GLA bureaucracy who manage to involve half a dozen people in doing the job that is normally done by a single inspector:
A GLA inspector comes out. As often as not he takes a colleague or two along for moral support. Each inspector fills out an entire notebook during the inspection which not infrequently lasts a whole day and more. When the GLA inspector is finished he does not make a decision. Instead he goes home and spends several weeks writing up a 20-page plus piece in which he gives in all its glory his account of every minute of the inspection, every conversation held etc. The inspector turns every document seen in the inspection into ‘exhibits’ as though he was investigating a murder – even where not a single breach of the law has been found.
Meanwhile, the person who applied for a licence is waiting, not allowed to trade, but paying his business overheads already. The GLA inspector’s extended essay is then run by any other inspectors who joined him on his excursion. Fellow inspectors are allowed to add comments. Meanwhile, the business is waiting for its licence. The report then goes to the inspector’s line manager, who did not attend the inspection but is allowed to add comments to the report. Meanwhile, the law-abiding businessman is waiting for his licence, and not allowed to trade. The full file of reports, and ‘exhibits’ and comments then goes to the GLA’s “Operational Support Unit” – a whole department whose job consists of proofreading inspection reports. If this department enjoys the read, they will pass it on to the “Licensing Department”. If not, they will send it back to the inspector for further edits. Meanwhile, the business is still waiting, and still not allowed to trade. After the report has made its way through the “Licensing Department” backlog, the Head of Licensing or the Licensing Officer will eventually spend half a day plus reading the full lever arch file. At the end of that read and in the best case scenario, they might write a letter which says “As our inspectors, several months ago, found nothing wrong with your business, here’s your licence”.
So several months and many, many civil servants later we get exactly the decision that the inspector should have made there and then on the day of the inspection, namely hand a licence to a business which has applied for a licence, has paid for the licence, is legally entitled to the licence, and is prohibited under criminal law from running its business and turning over any money in its legitimate, lawful business activity until it gets the blessed licence.
You couldn’t make up a slower, more expensive and more burdensome process if you tried. And this is no side aspect of the GLA’s way of operating. It is the GLA’s core business, the very job for which it was created. This is a licensing authority, who has managed to turn the process of licensing, of giving, refusing or taking away licences, into a ridiculously labour intensive and expensive and slow process, for no fathomable reason other than to create jobs for the boys. All this is paid for by the small labour provider businesses through an annual licence fee of over a thousand pounds.
Exactly one type of person benefits from the GLA’s existence: Consultancy firms who offer to handle small business’ dealings with the GLA for labour providers. And as it happens the main consultancy business in the sector is brazenly run and owned by one of the GLA’s board members who in turn purports to be speaking on behalf of the whole industry when saying that labour providers are in favour of continued GLA regulation.
Scrap it. It adds no value and costs the public purse far too much. And as the Daily Mail reported on 25 June this year, the quango is reduced to making up stories about supposed child slaves which it supposedly rescued in a desperate attempt to justify its continued existence! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2007935/Whistleblower-exposes-quangos-cynical-lie-child-labour-English-onion-field.html#ixzz1QZ7YuUKQComment Tags: #Gangmasters Licensing, #GLA, Compliance and Enforcement, Employment Law
in reply to “belinda”
(deleted text)
What she fails to add are the visits and interviews with the workers that are made to ensure that they are NOT being exploited. The GLA ensure that these workers are working safely, are living in safe and affordable accomodation, are being paid the correct wages for the work they are carrying out and that they have an organisation that they can contact should they have any problems / fears.
What “belinda” fails again to mention are the individuals and companies that as a result of the GLA action have been prevented from taking advantage of often very vulnerable workers.
this ‘Belinda’ sounds like someone with an axe to grind, is she someone who has, or knows of someone who has been refused a licence in the past because of being deemed unfit to hold one. Surely she should be on the side of the workers to ensure they receive the correct working conditions and pay for jobs they are doing.
Dear Belinda rather than the fantasy / scare stories in the Daily Mail as recommended in your post try something a bit more factual.
An independent survey of GLA licensed labour providers by the Universities of Sheffield and Liverpool in 2008 found that 79% were in favour of the licensing regime.
The govt’s own Hampton Implementation Review Report (2009) of the GLA found: The GLA’s impact in improving working conditions for some vulnerable workers has been impressive, particularly in view of its relatively small size
The GLA has a good awareness of the unintended consequences of its operational
decisions and takes proactive steps to minimise these
The GLA has actively sought to minimise any unnecessary additional regulatory burdens
that might have followed its licensing regime.
Nor do you find many Citizen Advice Bureau staff liaising with the police and other agencies to launch carefully targeted raids on farms and other workplaces to prevent malpractice, exploitation and abuse.
If anything the GLA remit needs extending to hotels / catering and care homes and agenciesComment Tags: Gangmasters Licensing Authority
Dear [Deleted Text]
Is that the same study which concluded that a Morecambe Bay disaster would be much less likely today thanks to the GLA? I think the *facts* over the last couple of months speak for themselves. Volunteers from the RNLI (not well-paid GLA officers!) around the cockle beds of Lancashire were having to go out to rescue cocklers in Lancashire several nights a week. So much so that the beds are now being closed because it seems the only way to prevent another Morecambe Bay – after the GLA spent years promoting itself on that very claim.
You speak of “carefully targeted raids on farms and other workplaces to prevent malpractice, exploitation and abuse” (your opinion as, I assume, a GLA employee). By contrast, a judge last month sharply criticized the GLA for persecuting a farmer guilty of no more than “a purely technical offence” telling the victim of GLA enforcement “there is no question of you exploiting cheap foreign labour, quite the reverse” (fact).
The National Farmer’s Union in today’s Farmer’s Weekly criticizes the GLA for being “hazy” about its rules: After the GLA declared itself incapable of confirming what its own rules mean, the NFU’s senior legal adviser warned “Everyone needs to know who is covered because it is so disruptive if you get it wrong. An enforcement raid can be immensely disruptive and the whole situation is far from clear.” (fact)
“Relatively small size”? Almost 100 employees to deal with just over 1200 licence holders, the bulk of which you yourself describe as unproblematic and wholly law abiding? About 1 civil servant per 15 SMEs? (facts) A £5m budget to regulate 1200 businesses? A budget of over £4000 per small or medium-size business that you regulate? (facts) That seems quite large and resource intensive to me, relatively speaking!
I do agree with you on one point, though. Citizen Advice Bureau staff are less likely to plan raids “with the police and other agencies”. That tends to be because CAB clients don’t normally want an immigration raid leading to their being locked up and being treated as guilty until proven innocent (facts as per ‘Papers Please” report). But if the objective is more raids by “police and other agencies” I repeat the point: Why not cut out the GLA middleman and give the GLA budget to “police and other agencies” instead?
BelindaComment Tags: Gangmasters Licensing Authority
A few more facts for Rae’s beneift:
Last month, an in-depth study by the conservation charity Confor found that over three quarters of forestry organisations believed “GLA licensing provided no benefit to the forestry industry”, and 88% find GLA inspection and the level of fees GLA charges “unacceptable”. What’s more, as a direct result of GLA
§ 26% of forestry organisation have made people redudant, stopped doing certain type of work or left the forest industry altogether
§ 56% of forestry organisations have become less financially viable
§ 41% have lost valued members of staff
Incidentially, I find it a bit rich accusing the Daily Mail of “fantasy / scare stories” in this particular instance! Surely at least in this case GLA was promoting fantasy and scare stories (i.e. claiming to have found child slaves trafficked into forced labour on a field in Kempsey) while the Daily Mail was reporting facts (i.e. these children were not slaves, not trafficked, not working, etc). How could the Dail Mail’s reporting that ‘social workers have ruled out foul play’ possiby amount to a scare story?!?Comment Tags: Gangmasters Licensing Authority
The Minimum Wage should be increased to a living wage level. At the moment the benefit system is subsidising poor employers to pay ridiculously low wages. It is wrong that half of children in poverty have a working parent.Comment Tags: Increase the minimum wage
leave this legislation alone it requires no change
repeal the red tape burden that is currently placed on trade unions, in particular aspects of the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act and the Code of Practice on Industrial ActionComment Tags: Repeal the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act
The minimum wage has made a huge difference to the lives of low paid workers & cannot be scrapped especially given how many people are currently living on or below the poverty line.Comment Tags: Keep the minimum wage
It seems very unfair that an employee only has to give the required amount of notice and can hand their notice in whenever they want – not for any partiuclar reason. A company cannot simply dismiss someone unless they have gone through extensive disciplinary or redundancy procedures. I agree with the procedures, but it seems unfair to businesses that they might be planning on launching a new product etc or have put in a lot of time and money training someone, only for them to hand their notice in. Employees (usually young ones) often think the grass is greener, but only later realise it often isn’t. Perhaps before an employee can hand their notice in they should approach the employer and consult with them just as we would if making them redundant! However this would be extra admin not less I know – but could persuade the employee to stay (as they may not be aware of future developments etc) and reduce the need for a company to advertise for and recruit, train etc a new employee.Comment Tags: Leaver, notice, recruitment
TUPE Regulations require update to:
* Amend rules on termination of employment for business reason (in line with principles of Daddy’s Dance Hall case). Existing Regulations 4(4) and 5 are more limited and less flexible that ARD required, and
* Establish joint liability for claims by transferring employees (3.1 of ARD), and
* Allow post transfer changes to terms and conditions of employment CONNECTED to the transfer (not due to the transfer itself), and
* Ensure properly and contractually agreed changes to terms and conditions are actually effective (and remain so), and
* Provide clarity on which laws that applies to cross board transfers (e.g. where a French undertaking is taken over by an English company and subsequently relocated to the UK, a conflict arises as to whether the French or the UK transfer law applies in relation to the transfer)Comment Tags: TUPE
Reverting back to the two year limit for unfair dismissal will be a backward step. The current twelve month period is sufficient for employers to assess employees and vice versa. Dealing with the large number of frivolous and spourious claims employers often face can be dealt with better by raising the proposed fee structure. It is suggested that an initial fee of £500 and hearing fee of £1,500 will deter the majority of such claims. There are also some other potential downsides to the proposed two year limit. Although this will make it easier for employers to rid themselves of staff it could also make it more difficult for recruit staff who enjoy the protection of the proposed two year period. It could also have the effect of increasing claims in other areas as ex-employees attempt to make a claim within the proposed two year limit.
Compulsory membership of the Institute for Learning is unnecessary restraint on employment in the FE sector. I would use the legislation to amend Statutory Instruments 2007/2116 and 2007/2264 to remove this requirement.Comment Tags: 2007/2116, 2007/2264, IfL, Institute for Learning
The negative effect of the benefits system and working need to be looked at. A recent part time recruit asked to be paid £5 per week less than she was offered otherwise she would lose all her benefits worth over £100 per week. She is then restricted to these hours and can never do any overtime making her less flexible that we would like. After 6 months we have been able to offer her more hours on a regular basis – but she will still be £30 a week worse off. This is low paid, part time work – £30 a week makes a big difference to her family.Comment Tags: benefits
The 30 day consultation for 20+ redundancies, coupled with the time delay to appoint representatives can nearly break a medium sized organisation already struggling. The impact of this enforced delay is to divert staff and management attention for weeks away from trying to generate and deliver business to clients, whilst they all worry about who will be redundant. Once you get to individual consultation staff just want to know if they are personally affected – the delay doesn’t do anything to help their stress levels – and as we know stress is now the main reason for sickness absence. Then after this long period of internal navel gazing the business has to try and recover – meanwhile additional staff leave voluntarily because they started looking for a job when they thought they might be made redundant because they could not be reassured at the start of the lengthy consultation process.Comment Tags: redundancy consultation
The requirement is for the consultation to commence at least 30 days before the first redundancy takes effect, but there is no requirement for it to last for 30 days, so that you could end it sooner once you have covered all of the issues.
The whole consultation before selection process is very disruptive in SME’s. In many instances the numbers of redundancies sought don’t even reach the 20+/30 days criteria but whole teams have to be unnerved even if ultimately only odd individuals are affected by redundancy.
Having to justifying fair grounds for selection is not in question but shouldn’t it be to the selected individuals at the start of process?
The problem with consulation before selection is the disruption it cause to whole teams and in some case across whole firms – identifying the pool, warning those at risk, consulting on selection criteria, then finally getting to the ranking/selection. People want certainty – I’m affected or I’m not. In practice they hate what appears to many to be waffle hiding a decision that has already been made but isn’t being communicated (no matter how genuine the consultation process is underlying cynicism is always there).
Even if initial consultation only takes a few days before the point of actually starting to implement the selection (and justifying the decision) the rest of the team have their CV’s on the market and the firm also ends up without those it was intended to keep. The time is takes to rebuild the confidence of teams from the impact of not actually being able to be decisive from the very start of these difficult processes is immeasurable. The harm caused ripples on and as Katie points out can near break already struggling SME’s which don’t have masses of alternative resources (people or financial) to draw upon.Comment Tags: redundancy consultation
We are a small community based organisation. We bought the local shop to turn into a Community Cooperative. There were several matters for concern, the main being TUPE. Most cooperatives are volunteer led, however, we had to take the euqivalent of 3 full time staff on through TUPE, we have to honour their holidays etc and one of them went on Maternity Leave on the day we took over the shop. This meant we had to employ and train other staff, one in Personal Licence to be the Licence Holder. The financial responsibility of this is huge, considering we could be running with volunteers. We respect and honour the terms of TUPE, but at what cost? Surely this should only apply to major concerns, such as Local Government etc? I believe that sme’s should be excepted from this to give them a fair chance to operate within their financial boundaries.Comment Tags: Should SME’s be excepted from TUPE?
Today, much is heard about the need for ‘labour flexibility’ and for necessary employee ‘adaptability’ to the demands of the increasingly globalised economy. Flexibility is often seen as a good thing in itself. To ordinary workers in many Central and Eastern Europe countries such debates sound strange. They have experienced flexibility as a deeply disruptive process of personal dislocation and disadvantage. Nowhere has change been more dramatic, even cataclysmic, than in Eastern Europe. Here a profound transition has occurred, from state planned to market economies. And, here, ‘flexibility’ is experienced coercively in ways in which workers could not previously have considered possible: as a scramble for jobs, as a lack of permanent contracts, as the necessity to work long hours despite poor or even hazardous health and safety, as the deliberate violation of labour rights. Such ‘flexibility’, for many workers, means little more than an ability to accept or endure multiple indignities and personal humiliation on a daily basis without any form of individual or collective recourse. It is the imposition of a new and effective form of labour discipline – the discipline of fear.Comment Tags: informalisation of employment is an attack on the working class