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.

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.