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9th
December 2011
Article by Roger Jeary,
Director of Research, UNITE the union
Officials state that
162 different aspects of employment law were under scrutiny
in the recent spotlight on employment legislation as part
of the government's red tape campaign. Of course the nature
of any internet consultation is such that those with irrational
thoughts will quickly respond making statements without any
evidence to support them. For any government to give credence
to such an approach makes clear the pre-determined nature
of this review.
Ministers and their Tory
cronies in parliament are persistently trying to link employment
rights to the growth agenda. Again the evidence would suggest
that no such correlation exists between adhering to the existing
limited rights, both individual and collective, and the likelihood
of employers taking on more workers. Even the CBI in its latest
5 page submission on growth to the Chancellor failed to make
reference to employment rights, a sure sign that this is not
high on their agenda.
This was underlined when
DBIS officials discussed their thoughts on collective redundancies
at a recent meeting with us. This so-called pre-consultation
"chat" started from the premise that government
has already decided to cut the 90 day consultation period.
No evidence was provided to support this starting point other
than unnamed businesses had said that this restricted their
ability to respond quickly to the need for change.
Of course the fact that
in almost all cases the business will have spent weeks if
not months considering its strategy for redundancies before
alerting the workforce to it, had escaped our friendly representatives
from DBIS. As it would seem had the fact that the consultation
period is not simply a period to discuss alternatives to redundancy
it is also a protective period for the workers under threat.
It also applies to only
20% of all redundancies as in the most part less than 100
employees are affected and, of course interpretation of UK
law already allows many larger employers to divide up the
workforce into units where less than 100 are affected in any
one place.
Added to this DBIS is
looking to limit the collective rights of workers when they
find themselves transferred to another employer under the
TUPE Regulations.
In both cases it was made
clear that if the trade unions wanted to persuade them differently
we would have to produce evidence to in response their position
reached without evidence.
The weakening of these
collective rights brings the government to a potential complaint
at European level. Formal consultation on proposed changes
is likely to be conducted in early 2012.
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