... to 2 years, from April Fools Day 2012

Smart money is that they will also at the same time introduce a fee for bringing a claim; this will likely be relatively modest and then will increase exponentially like other court fees have.

Whilst this won't affect dismissals for grounds which are automatically unfair (pregnancy, discrimination, etc) it seems to me a retrograde step, and I don't see the justification for such a serious reduction in workers' rights - particularly given the current parlous state of the economy.

But - as in the case of innocent accident victims, banks, etc - the government is unashamedly in thrall to big business, and is keen to present them with nice little earners at every opportunity.

Whilst there has to be some qualifying time limit, a year is a long time. would ask - if I have worked somewhere for 1 year and 11 months of good service, why should the employer have carte blanche from April to sack me totally unfairly? I won't hold my breath waiting for an answer from these bastaards.

Because it's one of the reasons the economy isn't growing – along with health and safety regulations.

Workers rights - Tory government, not exactly a match made in heaven.

In fairness this will probably affect small businesses more as big business tends to have big HR departments and lengthy recruitment processes so they can get the right match. Small businesses have to take on more of a risk so anything that makes them less apprehensive about taking the risk is positive IMO.

Oh absolutely, it's the inability of small employers to fire someone unfairly in breach of the law after their first year of employment which is responsible for the dearth of jobs in the economy ...


Can you think of a single other area of law where the victim of an unlawful act isn't allowed to seek redress from the court until they've waited a qualifying period? Imagine the outcry if the government proposed that you could only ask a court to punish someone who burgled your house after you'd lived there for two years ...

If a company needs more than a year to decide whether an employee is any good, they don't deserve to be in business.

... and of course any employer can fire a worker for being incompetent (along with a host of other reasons) at any time, perfectly fairly and legally.

This measure relates only to firing someone unfairly and unlawfully.

In reality where this is most likely to be used is when businesses need to shed staff and so they can say last in first out, you started 18 months ago so sorry time's up. Also be able to select the less productive workers when it comes to that point. It gives businesses some more flexibility to hire and fire.

I think what you're referring to is known as redundancy, and is a quite legitimate course of action for a company that finds itself (genuinely) with surplus employees. That is not the same as dismissing someone unfairly.

After losing a job after eleven and a half months because there was no need for any fair process to be taken I will only say that this is going even further in the wrong direction

Yet another reason for a benefit claimant to remain so. I can see from a claimants point of view, why take the risk of entering full time employment (minimum wage, manual labour in particular) and getting booted for no real reason? You then go through the hassle of trying to explain to the dole office why you got booted!.......The poverty trap is even more relevant today than ever.

To be honest, that is bollox.

It will make it harder to get back into work afterwards though, if you are sacked there will always be a suspicion that it was the employees fault no matter what the circumstance

This statement is complete nonsense. The qualifying period for unfair dismissal is one year (soon to be extended), and anyone dismissed prior to this, by definition, is not the victim of an unlawful act (unless they are dismissed for a reason that is classed as automatically unfair - pregnancy etc...)

We need a qualifying period. Everyone makes bad appointments from time to time, and the qualifying period allows employers to rectify these without the need for large compensation payouts.

Having said that 2 years is excessive.

But this only affects somebody dismissed by what we, as a society, define as unfair.

This extension is in no other words, a charter for business to behave unfairly within the first two years. It is, by its very definition unfair. Any business behaving fairly would be in no way affected by this.

It's not nonsense. Allowing an employee to be sacked without having done anything wrong is unfair on that employee. In the same way that allowing a burglar to take from your house would be unfair. If you'd only just moved into your house you would expect the same protection under the law as someone who'd lived there for 20 years. So why is employment law different?
If the employer made a mistake and either doesn't need or want that employee then that is the employer's mistake. Why should the employee suffer because of a mistake by an employer?
If the employee is not up to the required standard then they can be sacked legitimately without need for any qualifying period. So why is this period necessary?
If an employer wants a "flexible" workforce then they should employ workers on short term contracts ie 3/4/5/whatever years and pay the corresponding rise in wages necessary to compensate for lower job security.

Employers seem to want everything their way.

SHUT UP, ffs, you might be putting ideas into the b'stards' heads

Completely irrelevant. You can be dismissed unfairly at any time, even your first day. The only relevance of the law relating to unfair dismissal is whether you can claim for it or not. Just because you have not worked at a place long enough to qualify does not make a dismissal fair.


Disingenuous nonsense. Define "Made a mistake". If you are not incapable of doing the job, if you haven't lied about your qualifications, if your conduct hasn't been poor, if you have done nothing illegal, and in short committed no sackable offence, then what do you count as an "employer's mistake" justifying ending someone's job?


Which is the whole point of the thread

If the government want to make it more attractive to start and run a business then maybe they could reduced the amount of form filling we have to do for the Office of National Statistics. We have to fill in:

Monthly - turnover data, headcount data, labour cost

Quarterly - Capital spend details, Quarterly stock details

Annually - Business register survey, Business survey - breakdown of the income statement, International trade survey, Prodcom

Whilst I disagree with this change I cannot see it being abused by the bigger employers - Public sector, supermarkets etc. I also can't see the logic in spending time training and integrating personnel into your firm for two years and then finishing them to prevent an unfair dismisal claim in the future. If someone has survived passed their probabtionary period it usually a good indication of their suitability.

The majority of posts on here are just sabre rattling from the usual suspects with an axe to grind against the Tories and their perceived masters.

I used to hate getting the annual return from the ONS, for some strange reason they had picked us at random to report on one employee at random and describe what his job function was and how much he had earned that year - I'd probably have offered the information if they had asked nicely but at the bottom of the letter every year they threaten you with a fine if you don't participate - theres nothing will get my back up quicker than a civil servant threatening me with a made-up fine if I don't offer them something to justify their position.

By complete coincidence the person that they picked at random for their survey was my brother who was an employee at the time, so we made it all up, every year. Its probably why the global recession happened in '07 because the national average salary was thought to be so much higher than it was given my brothers excessive wages.

And of course by admitting that I am now liable for criminal charges - how ridiculous is the whole bollox when the information can easily be obtained from the government office down the corridor, you know, the one that collects the true returns on the tax forms every month.

I experienced that years ago. Was booted out of a company within about four months for refusing to tell porkies to sell advertising. Employer wouldn't write to the social to tell them why they'd kicked me out (of course) or cover his own backside by telling them it was a redundancy, so I got no money for a number of weeks – even though the person dealing with me believed me, as they'd had a couple of other people with similar cases from the same company. After all, how do you prove it was the boss that told you to lie? Great.

That was my first job, as it happens. It happened to at least one more member of staff that I know of. The company went bust in fairly short order – not surprisingly. But that was of little consolation at the time.

But the point is that it is utter and complete nonsense that people only get sacked/laid off when they're to blame or when the employer has a legitimate reason etc.

I had to produce similar reports on a weekly basis for the SMMT, it took all of about the time to roll & smoke a fag

Exactly.



Y'see, you weren't doing too badly until you decided to spout this cobblers. I'd even agreed with an earlier part of your post.

But this is like your 'real world' malarky – just another form of something that's perilously close to another form of Godwin's.

Mintball - look at the posters who have raised this issue and look at what they have written - your fella in particular!! I think this change is wrong but its a storm in a teacup and not worthy of the rant some think it justifies.

Anything that encourages private sector employers to employ people must be a good thing - this is a very tough economic environment right now. Unless the government is going to borrow a load money and start some Keynes stylee projects - unlikely - then it is the private sector that must lead the way and government need to encourage this.