Explain to me - in words of one syllable, me not being an economic genuis and all - how making it easier for businesses to unfairly dismiss their staff without reprisals is going to actually create more jobs in the economy?

Either a business has the work to justify employing someone and the cash to be able to do so, or they don't. No business is going to take a punt on employing a load of new staff it doesn't need just because it can screw them over in 23 months time and start again with some new ones.

When it affects someone's life – and their future prospects, as people have illustrated here – then it is worth kicking up a fuss about.



Agreed. But as has been pointed out, there are entirely fair and proper ways to resolve a situation where an employee can't do the job or the company subsequently finds itself in a situation where it needs to lay off staff to survive. This isn't about that.



Give me one single example of where an employer has been put off taking on new staff to grow their business because of unfair dismissal legislation as it stands. Just one example.



As I said – one example of where current legislation has stopped an employer taking on new staff to grow their business.

And yes – of course the private sector has a role to play. Indeed, many senior business types promised that they would create the jobs that would absorb those being made redundant by the cuts that they supported. They have singularly failed to do so. And indeed, as we've seen elsewhere, are actually benefitting from free labour, paid for by you and me. If they needed those jobs doing, they should create proper jobs and fill them. The likes of Tesco can certainly afford to.

But yes, we could do with a touch of Keynes. That was, in effect, how we built a recovery after WWII when we were in an even bigger hole financially than we are now.

And there's no shortage of things that could usefully be built – not least, housing, which we have a serious shortage of and have had for some years.

Because, as I'm sure you're effectively saying, we need to grow our way out of the recession. But since something like 3/4 of the economy is now based on the service industries – from nail parlours to insurance for everything you can imagine to restaurants to shops – we actually need people to have money in their pockets to boost those (private) businesses. So a continued policy of simply slashing jobs is utterly counter productive. Now the state isn't paying a wage for work – it's just paying to put someone out of work and with less money to put back into their local economy. Then when there's less money around for nail treatments and meals out, some at least of those parlours and restaurants will go bust, and that'll be more people on the dole with less money to put back into the local economy. And so on.

I suppose the suggestion is that an organisation may be more willing to take on short-term contracted appointments and have to spend less time terminating them should their economic situation not improve twelve months later. It's a weak argument but seeing as, in my experience, organisations tend to fly by the seat of their pants on resourcing issues it could reduce the need for the more administrative aspects of management because an organisation wouldn't have to be as thorough when it comes to terminating the employment.

Nothing stopping them doing that now, they may have to pay more for the flexibility or they may have more issues getting the staff they need but thems the breaks.

Eh?

When a short-term contract comes to an end, it comes to an end. It's not and never has been an unfair dismissal - hell, it's not even a dismissal.

So not allowing people to seek restitution foe unlawful unfair dismissal until they've been with the employer for two years wil have no effect - none at all - on an organisation's ability to "to take on short-term contracted appointments" or the amount of time they spend terminating them when the contract ends.

I agree but I can see situations where a company hasn't kept its eye on the date and it's gone over a year's service. Although the individual isn't entitled to redundancy they are entitled to a formal termination process otherwise they can go to a tribunal. I know everybody should have that formal termination process but there also comes times when business is busy and these things get forgotten. If you are running a tight ship i.e. not much profit, that additional week or two on top of a wage budget can be critical. I don't know what the answer is because I can see both points of view. If pushed I would say that your relationship with your employees is the most critical and if you can manage that well you often find that successful compromise in the relationship is more achievable.

Yeah but I probably wasn't that clear there. I mean that even with fixed-term contracts sometimes they run over and the admin isn't that hot on in (my reference was to the administration aspect of management above). So the example would be that if there is a 1 year qualifying period and you offer a 14 month contract but it rolls over for an extra month you have to go through a formal termination process i.e. serve notice, unless you're really hot on your termination process which I've just mentioned in the discussion with Graeme. Sometimes the FTC might just need extending for a week, a month, six weeks and the paperwork supporting it isn't as quick through. Does that make a bit more sense now with what I've said above? I can't read through it all again as I've lost my love for speaking corporatese lol.

I'm sorry that is the employers own damn fault.

Both parties know the end date, both parties would have agreed (or should have) to any contingency for project over runs or early completions, both parties would in my experience be discussing how the contract would end and any handover required. If that slips then the project manager's backside wants kicking.

You can not amend legislation because management are numpties.

I agree wholeheartedly.

Every project I've ever worked on has been time-critical. Time is usually one of, if not the major cost of any project and any project manager that does not have that in the forefront of his mind, should be dispatched to the filing room. FFS even the most basic project management software can be enabled to flag at critical moments in time.

That's the whole point though mate, the legislation isn't being amended for that reason. The legislation is being amended so that this bunch of chancing s can appear to be actually doing something to help employers. The fact that most employers will think it's worth about 4/5ths of buggerall is neither here nor there

Wrong.

Don't stop there

I understand that but not all managers are numpties and not all managers are bad people. All managers though do make mistakes and in the modern working environment, with its pressures/stresses the employment relationship has to have equilibrium, which is why I was talking about it needing to be managed well with good intentions on both sides.

All I was offering was that with the current employment conditions as they are some organisations may feel this gives them flexibility around their resourcing and explained how that relates to the change in law. You may think that is unethical but I'm not arguing that it is just suggesting that for some organisations it might actually give them freedom to explore different resourcing situations which may benefit them and the local talent pool by providing a solution to short-term resourcing issues. In that situation you might even be able to argue it is more ethical because of the potential problems it could solve.

I have experienced the issue in organisations where FTCs have been given out and not extended formally but have continued because an organisation hasn't addressed the administration. Of course the organisation is responsible for that, however sometimes the local management may be restricted because of decisions out of their hands. It can be the case that all this uncertainty is bad/horrible for all involved but I think you have to see both sides of the picture even more when in situations like this. Big corporations have less to argue with the point but small businesses do especially those where that kind of flexibility can mean sink or swim.

I think the point is that really this is political ideology masquerading as helping out new businesses and that's the discussion point. However it doesn't mean there isn't an argument there for a change in the law because I've just suggested a situation where that could benefit both parties.

At the moment the one year qualifying rule doesn't really make that much difference in terms of protection for the individual unless they are unfairly/wrongfully dismissed (see later on evidence). Even with a one year qualifying rule a company can still remove a person from the organisation via redundancy and the employee gets nothing from that (redundancy having a 2 year qualifying rule for those that might be reading and not now). It doesn't require that an employee receives a payment if they were made to leave the business after, say, 14 months as long as the company follows its policies. How much extra work that creates must be impossible to predict with any accuracy and the same with how that impacts upon those organisations needing flexibility. Discrimination claims do not require a qualifying period so really we are only talking about unfair/wrongful dismissal and we don't really have a figure on which we can base our evidence i.e. how many are there for people who have between 1 year and 2 years service? There could be thousands, there could be a couple of hundred. If it was the former then very hard to argue against. If it was the latter you could argue that the flexibility within the economy is the bigger picture. Same with the other point of view i.e. how many companies really require this sort of flexibility? It might be easier to predict this because getting the information is not tied to data protection issues (compromise agreements etc). However gathering that information could take a while and be useless as soon as we've got it.

Unfortunately we'll (the UK) probably never be able to resolve the situation with the sort of progressive adult debate needed in this country because the two main political parties employment rights/laws are tied to ideological missions (for whatever reasons) rather than a true desire to sort the problem out.

I know I'm hardly stating anything original by saying that but it's a view that can be applied to too many issues in the UK. It's one of the things that has needed to change for decades i.e. since consensus politics was thrown out of the window it's been like this. There needs to be some sort of national consensus about what we want as a country instead of us just getting vague manifestos foisted on us. Electoral reform might be the only way this could have happened i.e. politicians are put in the house by us, the voting public and yet tonnes of decisions are decided by corporations who line the pockets of the criminals who steal our votes to give them the authority.

So, after all that, you agree that the legislation, as it is proposed, is pointless then?

Probably more that it can't be proven either way lol.

No he's not.

Wow!

The most mega contribution to a forum discussion yet!!!!









Not.

[url=http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/Understandingyourworkstatus/Fixedtermworkers/DG_175138Ending and renewing fixed-term contracts[/url.

Let me point you in the right direction.

Employment Rights Act 1996 s.195 (1) (b) and s.136 (1) (b).

Also confirmed in The Fixed Term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002.

Also confirmed in the Government link above...

"However, failing to renew a fixed-term contract is considered to be a dismissal"

He is wrong.