Off Topic Worker rights

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Vincemac

Vincemac

Well-Known Member
Jan 25, 2011
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New rules coming out shortly
Does that mean workers can have time off well not time off but work other hours
For school runs and looking after children
Who works them hours then
Does it mean they have weekends off how will it work
Especially when Christmas and school holidays are about
Who works them days /hours ????
 
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Ask Labour mate. One of their flagship election policies. Based on early sight today it is about as clear as mud what they plan to do. Other than spend up to 3 years chewing the fat.

They have set themselves up for a fall imo. Suggesting they are the party for workers and business. Seems unlilekly to be achievable. Unions seem to have the influence they wanted, so things like probation periods wont have teeth. Find me a business that thinks that is a good deal and I will eat my hat.

My bet is this has no easy middle ground. I spent today looking at redundancy programmes shape and size for a large org, where unions are all powerful. Messy is an understatement. But businesses will go pop without it. I doubt politicians are bright enough to grasp the genie they are letting out of this bottle.
 
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The biggest issue from my perspective (employment lawyer) is that the bill (as opposed to the news reports of the bill...) is full of gaps.

The biggest fear my clients had (I act almost exclusively for employers) was the much highlighted "day 1 right to bring a claim". The 9-month statutory probationary period blows a huge hole in that - I would expect that there will be a lot of lobbying (from employers organisations) to increase the period to 12 months or (from the unions) to 6 - I`d guess that 12 will win (lots of work can be seasonal in nature).

A 12 month "trial period" is exactly what happened before it was increased to 2 years...
The flexible working stuff isn`t a huge issue either - most offers these days for office jobs allow for a degree of home working anyway and the current rules allow people to ask for it (and other flexibility) and give the employers a list of reasons they can use to say "NO" - the only meaningful change is that the refusal has to be "reasonable" whereas strictly speaking it didn`t need to be before (but if it wasn`t then the employer was open to a challenge based on the duty of good faith).

The zero hours stuff seems reasonable to me (the right to request certainty) but open to abuse as there is scope for employees to "opt-out" of that (and difficult to prove pressure has been applied at the time that the job was offered...)

The real issue will be for small businesses - a further raft of stuff to keep on top of...more work for employment lawyers though so a yellowbelly shaped silver lining...
 
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DH4 said:
Pay people enough and they will do it. Blokes used to fight to go in Xmas day down the pit cos it was very well paid and there was relatively little to do. :emoticon-0102-bigsm
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Paying people dosnt realy apply when you are on a fixed salary
Some one else will have to work when you claim your rights
 
Vincemac said:
New rules coming out shortly
Does that mean workers can have time off well not time off but work other hours
For school runs and looking after children
Who works them hours then
Does it mean they have weekends off how will it work
Especially when Christmas and school holidays are about
Who works them days /hours ????
Click to expand...
Covid taught us that the traditional way of working isn't the only way of working.
Flexibility can benefit both the employee and the employer.
 
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TopCat_ said:
Covid taught us that the traditional way of working isn't the only way of working.
Flexibility can benefit both the employee and the employer.
Click to expand...
Very much so
However there is jobs with very little or no flexibility
 
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TopCat_ said:
There are, but that's not to say flexibility can't be found where it doesn't currently exist. It's not a one size fits all approach.
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Yeah it will be challenging
People can’t just walk out the work place there will need to be replaced
And by whom
It will be difficult to implement without the help of other workers
 
Vincemac said:
Yeah it will be challenging
People can’t just walk out the work place there will need to be replaced
And by whom
It will be difficult to implement without the help of other workers
Click to expand...
Or the work gets done at a different time. Like I say, it's about finding different and new solutions.
 
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Good. The UK has been in a productivity crisis for years now. And employers have tried the stick method over and over again - to ever worsening results. Probably time we tried a bit of carrot.
 
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Frazier the Lion said:
Good. The UK has been in a productivity crisis for years now. And employers have tried the stick method over and over again - to ever worsening results. Probably time we tried a bit of carrot.
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Mmm. % of folk getting lazier in my opinion. See it too often in my line of work. Way too difficult to sack people these days for under performance.
 
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FellTop said:
Mmm. % of folk getting lazier in my opinion. See it too often in my line of work. Way too difficult to sack people these days for under performance.
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Companies should probably do a better job of hiring, training and motivating. Business is more often than not completely dysfunctional these days from what I see. Completely bereft of strategy and long term thinking. We pretend that we can turn round companies by turning the screw and getting rid of a few bad apples low down. Most of the time, a business would perk up immediately if you just culled the c suite.
 
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FellTop said:
Mmm. % of folk getting lazier in my opinion. See it too often in my line of work. Way too difficult to sack people these days for under performance.
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It's the rights vs responsibilities thing again. Employees rights are very important and its good that more employers are recognising that. However, there are jobs/sectors where significant responsibilities are bestowed upon the employee. In too many cases, there are people who believe that their rights are more important than their responsibilities, which leaves more diligent people to pick up their slack. I don't see this in the sector that I work in, but I am aware of it in other sectors. (Also, I'm obviously being deliberately vague). Employment law/workers rights/government ministers don't seem to anticipate these problems.
 
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FellTop said:
Mmm. % of folk getting lazier in my opinion. See it too often in my line of work. Way too difficult to sack people these days for under performance.
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It's pretty straightforward to get rid of a poor performer, all you need is a fair process which gives the employee notice that they need to improve and provide support to do that over a reasonable review period. It's beyond me how so many employers find this difficult.
 
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Row 3 said:
It's pretty straightforward to get rid of a poor performer, all you need is a fair process which gives the employee notice that they need to improve and provide support to do that over a reasonable review period. It's beyond me how so many employers find this difficult.
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Are you talking from experience, my experiences whilst running/owning several businesses over the past 46 years lead me to believe the opposite.
 
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