Tories target employment rights and access to justice‏

Unelected Tory grandee Lord Hunt has published a prospectus for Tory reform of employment rights – much of which was trailed last year in the Conservative Green paper ‘cutting the burden of red tape on business.’
http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2009/10/uk-big-business-on-de-regulation-roll.html

A cursory read reveals Hunt’s proposals (set out in full below) to be a lot of nonsense. Some of the measures he rails against were signed by Tory government; there is no gold plating of directives (ICE is unusable and the agency workers directive has a British opt out for 3 months); and the stuff on tribunals is designed to deny people access to justice. This is a party – a Tory party – more worried about freeing up Directors’ time – as Hunt openly acknowledges – than in protecting workers’ jobs.

The Tory threat to scrap work force agreements for outsourced staff in public services is designed to pave the way for CCT exploitation of transferred workers and the re-emergence of a two tier workforce.

Nice for the unelected to tell the rest of us how we are to run our lives......

Conservatives Pledge Action on TUPE and Tribunals

Since 2008, Lord Hunt has sat on the Conservative front bench in the House of Lords where he has shadowed Labour's business secretary Peter Mandelson. As David Hunt, he was an MP from 1976 to 1997. From 1995-2005, he was a senior partner of Beachcroft LLP. Here, he outlines five priorities for government if the Conservatives are elected

The Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher and John Major - in which I had the honour to serve - led the world with their labour market reforms during the 1980s and 1990s. We inherited a sclerotic labour market, riddled with so-called `Spanish practices' and dominated by the bully-boy tactics of trade union militants. We gave the unions back to their decent members and restored the right of managers to manage.

The effects on structural unemployment were impressive. By the early 1990s, we had 69 per cent of our working-age population in work, compared with a European Community (EC) average of 61 per cent; and 28 per cent of our unemployed people were long-term unemployed, compared with an EC average of over 45 per cent.

When the recession of the early 1990s ended, unemployment began to fall almost straight away. The markets were surprised and, if I am to be candid, so were we - very pleasantly surprised. Our flexible labour market was working.

One of the great battles of the Major years was over the so-called `Social Chapter'. This was an attempt by the European Commission to extend the reach of the then European Community into `social affairs', removing the national veto over a whole raft of hugely important economic matters and, at the Maastricht negotiations, the chapter was removed and attached to the treaty as a protocol, from which the UK enjoyed an opt-out. Labour pledged to end the opt-out should it ever return to office.

In the meantime, quite independently of the Social Protocol, as employment secretary in 1993-94, I fought a running battle against a series of directives that kept returning again
and again, in slightly different guises, all relating to the workplace.

All were motivated by the continental, social democratic model and all to some degree would have reversed our attempts to create an enterprise economy - and enterprising society - here in the UK. We called them the `Lazarus Directives'.

Conservative policy now is to repatriate employment law back to the UK. Given that this will require amendment by treaty, I shall restrict my comments to working with the existing directives and highlighting the fact that, until such time as repatriation does occur, our policy is to engage fully with the European Union on employment matters to safeguard our national interest.

This brings us to the present day. We have recently seen the highest unemployment on record among 16-24 year-olds and it is now over a decade since Tony Blair signed away the Social Chapter opt-out in return for precisely nothing. The only reason we have not seen unemployment soar and recession turn into depression is because so many workers in the private sector have been willing to accept pay freezes or reductions in hours, rather than risk losing their jobs entirely. The pragmatism of the people, not the policies of the government, saved the day.

An incoming Conservative government will have a job on its hands. The trade unions now draw their membership disproportionately from the public sector and, for all their protestations, they know as well as the rest of us that hard times lie ahead. Neither they nor anyone else should be allowed to impede our path out of trouble.

Since Labour returned to office, there have been 25 Acts of Parliament and around 250 pieces of secondary legislation that have directly added to the corpus of employment law, many of them consequent upon the notorious `Warwick agreements' between the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Given that the unions will be contributing an estimated 75 per cent of Labour's funds for the forthcoming general election campaign, I see no reason to believe this trend would change under a re-elected Labour government.

I have been asked to set out five areas in which a Conservative government might seek to restore flexibility to the labour market, and the balance between employer and employed, in order that employees should be able to work in the changing lifestyles of today, while companies once again enjoy the benefits of pro-competitive laws that encourage small businesses in particular to employ more people, and also make investing in the UK more attractive for firms from overseas. There are plenty of other ideas around too, but here are five obvious priorities.

Regulation

Between 1998 and 2009, new employment regulations cost £72 billion, out of a total cost of all new business regulations of £76 billion, some 95 per cent of the extra burden related to employment regulation. Much of the disproportionate regulation that afflicts us originates at the European level and it is high time we stopped making things worse than they need to be. We would strip the so-called `gold plating' from directives such as the Part-time Work Directive, the Fixed-term Work Directive, the Information on Employment Conditions Directive (to exclude casual workers) and the proposed Agency Workers Directive regulations. We would also consider more use of `sunset' clauses and the `one in, one out' principle.

Employment Tribunals

We would raise the limit for deposits (currently £500) and/or cost awards (currently £10,000) to discourage weak or vexatious claims. The average cost to an employer of defending a tribunal case is around £9,000 and almost ten days' worth of directors' and or senior managers' time is lost per case. We would review the tribunal rules of procedure. We would aim to ensure a more balanced and consistent approach across tribunals and/or require (rather than allow) the president of the employment tribunals to make practice directions on the management of cases, generally, in order to promote greater consistency of approach by different tribunals.

We would harmonise the deadline and grounds for extension for bringing tribunal complaints and impose compulsory mediation for certain types of cases that would benefit from this most; for example, discrimination cases. Mediation is seen by many as the future for resolving legal disputes. Even where it fails, the issues will have been aired sufficiently to make the ensuing process quicker, easier and more likely to avoid vexatious claims. We will consult on these matters before making lasting changes.

Flexible working for all parents and flexible parental leave

We want to give as many people as possible the chance to work flexibly, but we also want to be fair to employers. Currently, the right to request flexible working is available only to parents with children under 17 or disabled children under 18. We are committed to extending the right to request flexible working to all parents of children under the age of 18. It would be unfair and inappropriate to compel employers, so we are limiting the policy to the `right to request', rather than allowing a `right to demand'. We will also seek to turn the public sector - Britain's biggest employer - into a world leader in providing flexible working opportunities.

We believe paid maternity leave should be more flexible. While the first 14 weeks should automatically apply to the mother so she can bond with the child, it should be up to parents to decide how to use the remaining period. We will increase the flexibility of the system so that parents can decide how to divide their paid maternity leave and are able to make use of it simultaneously. Under Labour, only mothers can take the first 26 weeks of parental leave.

TUPE

As readers will be well aware, the TUPE regulations protect employees where their employer changes as a result of a transfer of the undertaking or business in which they work. The employees automatically become employees of the new employer on the same terms and conditions. This all springs from the requirements of EU law. As matters stand, however, the TUPE regulations here in the UK go beyond what is required by EU law, for the EU directive states only that regulations should apply where there is a 'transfer of an economic entity which retains its identity'.

A Conservative government would seek to rein in those of the government's `service provision changes' - where activities are contracted out, contracted in, or reassigned from one contractor to another - that go beyond what is required. This would take many transactions outside the scope of the law, giving firms more freedom to out-source work and change service providers, giving service providers more freedom to bid for contracts.

Redundancy

We would seek to incentivise employers to find alternative, suitable employment for potentially redundant workers, and also impose a greater onus on the employee to seek redeployment in the company. Employees in sectors such as financial services tend to opt for a redundancy payment even when the employer has a good alternative role available, and the onus is currently on the employer to prove that
the employee's decision to refuse redeployment is unreasonable. A genuinely balanced approach is essential, and we would aim also to enhance clarity and consistency within the system.

Lord Hunt is shadow minister for business, enterprise and regulation

http://www.elaweb.org.uk/resources/conservativespledgeactionontupeandtribunals.aspx