Cable denies creating climate of fear with staff law reforms
Posted by catheverett in Staff on Wed, 23/11/2011 - 16:46
The business secretary has refuted claims that he is fostering a environment in which workers will fear for their jobs as a result of a proposed reform of employment regulations.
Speaking to manufacturing group EEF, Vince Cable announced a call for evidence on whether the 90-day minimum consultation period for collective redundancies of more than 100 should be reduced.
He also said that ministers would seek views on how best to streamline existing dismissal processes and whether the government should introduce a right to "compensated no fault dismissal" for small firms with less than 10 staff which would prevent sacked staff from making a tribunal claim for unfair dismissal.
In addition, the Ministry of Justice is to publish a consultation on introducing initial fees for anyone wanting to lodge a claim with an employment tribunal as well as a second fee of up to £30,000 to take that claim to a hearing.
While Cable acknowledged that the UK's labour market was already one of the most "flexible" in the world, he said that many employers still felt that existing employment law acted as a barrier to growth. "We're knocking down that barrier today – getting the state out of the way, making it easier for businesses to take on staff and improving the process when staff have to be let go," he attested.
But this proposed "re-balancing" of employment legislation was "not – emphatically not – an attempt to give businesses an easy ride at the expense of their staff," Cable claimed. "Nor have we made a cynical choice to favour flexibility over fairness," he added.
In a bid to prove his point, the business secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he had ruled out the more controversial ideas such as no-fault dismissals laid out in the recommendations made to Number 10 by private equity boss Adrian Beecroft last month.
However, there are plans to:
- Publish a call for evidence on proposals to simplify TUPE regulations
- Close a loophole in case law that enables staff to blow the whistle on their own personal work contracts
- Merge 17 National Minimum Wage regulations
- Launch a consultation next spring to streamline the recruitment sector's current regulatory regime
- Devise a means for employers to view Criminal Records Bureau checks online by 2013.
In response to its 'Resolving Workplace Disputes' consultation, the government has also committed to:
- Require all parties involved in an employment dispute to go to ACAS for pre-claim conciliation before they can go to a tribunal
- Double the qualification period for unfair dismissal claims to two years
- Publish a consultation in the New Year on 'protected conversations'
- Appoint Mr Justice Underhill to lead an independent review of existing tribunal procedures in order to establish whether they are fit-for-purpose
- Further consult on simplifying compromise agreements, which will be renamed ‘settlement agreements’
- Consult on a 'rapid resolution' scheme to try and speed up and cut the costs of resolving tribunal claims
- Modify the formulae for up-rating tribunal awards and statutory redundancy payments that round them to the nearest pound in a bid to save businesses net of £5.4m each year.
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