On Monday David Cameron met with business leaders at a jobs summit designed to encourage the private sector to create more employment opportunities. Senior executives from major companies including Tesco, Microsoft, ASDA, McDonalds, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis and Centrica attended, and all have since pledged to create thousands of jobs.
The summit was also used to present prospective reform of employment law, on which the government will soon be launching a consultation. The proposed “Employers’ Charter”, could, among other things, extend the qualifying period of service for an employee to bring an unfair dismissal claim from one year to two, introduce a fee obligation for those bringing tribunal cases and reduce the time an employee is entitled to statutory sick pay from the current 28 weeks. Additionally, smaller businesses would be excluded from more stringent employment laws….
The response to the proposals has been predictably polarised. Many businesses welcomed the moves as reducing red tape and enabling a hiring culture, whilst unions slated the measures as increasing employee vulnerability. David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce cautiously welcomed the proposals, but said that more information would be needed as to their exact nature, whilst stressing the need to “strip back red tape”. Ed Miliband responded by criticising to Government’s decision to scrap the Future Jobs Fund, claiming that it would have created 100,000 extra jobs – in comparison the largest jobs’ pledge from the summit was 20,000 from Sainsbury’s over the next 3 years.
It’s worth noting that the Labour party put forward the idea of a tribunal fee (of up to £100) for employees nearly 10 years ago, but eventually shelved it (the new proposals cite a fee range of £30-£500, with expectation that it would be towards the higher end of the range). It’s also interesting to note from this article the BCC’s call to reform the tribunal process, which it re-iterated just last week.
So what do you think about it all? Is unfair dismissal unfair dismissal whenever it happens? Do you agree with moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to business legislation? Do you think a fee or deposit for tribunals would discourage spurious claims, or would it penalise genuine claimants? How would you and/or your business be affected by the proposals?
