Top of the list? Sack business secretary John Hutton. Reports in the press claim senior union official can't stand to be in the same room as him and want prime minister Gordon Brown to give him the boot.
An unnamed unionist said there had been a complete "breakdown in relations" with Hutton because of his perceived pro-business leanings. In a speech in May, he said the government was satisfied it had got the balance of employment legislation right.
This angered unions who accused him of "losing touch with reality", and pledged to fight for stronger laws.
The story has got political and union bloggers speculating as to what might happen.
]]> In true politician style, Hutton said it was up to the PM to decide whether he keeps his job - not the trade unions. It's inconceivable that Brown would cave in to their demands, it would damage his credibility hugely and open himself up to further accusations that Labour is in the pocket of the union movement.But with the general election creeping ever closer, will Hutton still be in his job come voting day?
More to the point, if he were to be reshuffled, who would take his place? A more union-friendly Labour minister with an agenda to keep the comrades happy? Employers should be watching this situation very carefully as the political machinations play out in the coming months.
]]>At a first glance the plans look remarkably similar (surprise, surprise). On the one hand you have current skills ministers David Lammy and John Denham saying they want more employers to get involved and they're making it easier for businesses to do just that. The draft Apprenticeship bill launched last week said it will define what an apprenticeship is - well, that's a start - but also it would go further to set up a national register of apprenticeship employers. It promised £1bn funding by 2011.
On the other hand, you have the Tory proposals - £2,000 offered to employers that offer apprenticeships, and £750m overall to support apprentices of all ages. This one was slightly different, in that if offered to cut red tape, reduce bureaucracy and minimise the burden on employers: all the lovely things that employers want to hear.
Yes, offering money and bonus schemes is one thing to get employers interested, but is that really worth all the complicity in the skills system? To access money for apprenticeships, employers have to go through Train to Gain - already complained about by many businesses and senior figures as being too complex, too lengthy and too daunting to enter into.
If you're in charge of making decisions about skills or training in your company, no matter how big or small, what do you need from the government, or indeed the opposition, to make you take notice and get involved to offer apprenticeships?
The document can be downloaded here. Be warned - it's a weighty piece of work (more than 200 pages long) but the executive summary is useful.
It succinctly covers the government's plans on a new equality duty, gender pay, positive action, gagging clauses in pay deals, extending tribunals' powers, union equality reps.
The government also said it would be working with the Tribunals Service, employment judges "and other relevant stakeholders", to identify other ways of ensuring that lessons are learnt from tribunal judgments.
The losers it seems are the Welsh and Indian workers of lower castes. The government said it did not intend to introduced specific protection against caste discrimination or discrimination of Welsh speakers.
]]>The speech made last week by Nicola Brewer, Equalities and Human Rights Commission chief executive, highlighted the fact that the UK's parental rights currently support the idea that fathers are "optional seasoning" on children's lives, while mothers are the main carers ('Maternity leave could damage women's careers', Personneltoday.com, 14 July).
]]> By improving maternity rights over the past decade, policy makers have unintentionally entrenched gender stereotypes. Falling numbers of women in the upper echelons of private and public sector organisations reflect this.That the majority of recruitment agencies have been asked by employers to avoid putting forward women of child-bearing age (see page 4) shows just how embedded sex discrimination is in our employment culture. Unlawful or not, it is the risk of maternity leave that employers, particularly smaller ones, are considering during the hiring process.
Enabling the optional transfer of mothers' benefits to fathers for the second six months of leave, as outlined in the Work and Families Act 2006, will help a little. But it is HR who can really start to make a difference.
To larger employers, parental leave and pay are usually part of a suite of benefits that make them a great place to work, and are usually set way above statutory levels. But very few companies offer paternity rights at levels that begin to compare to maternity rights. It will be a bold employer that does so, but one that will start to make a real impact on equality in the workplace.
If dads had the right to just 12 weeks' paternity leave paid at 90% salary, then surely employers who want to avoid women of child-bearing age would equally want to avoid potential new fathers. Even the most unscrupulous employer cannot ask a recruitment agency that.
Chancellor Alistair Darling reiterated his call for pay restraint earlier this week, and with inflation running at an 11-year high of 3.8%, workers and unions will be demanding higher pay deals.
But as Sheila points out, the next big round of pay deals is scheduled for January 2009, with inflation widely expected to be on a downward curve by then.
Writing exclusively for Personneltoday.com, Jim Savege, the lead on pay at the Public Sector People Managers' Association, said this week's public sector strikes demonstrated a real need for pay modernisation in local government and beyond.
But while trade unions are determined to make their point over low pay for their members, the immediate challenge is settling this year's disputes before employers can even contemplate looking ahead to 2009.
]]>For this was just as much about listening to how the London mayor plans to deal with knife crime as it was to see how the floppy-haired politician would deal with MPs' questions under pressure. Would he shoot or be fired at? Would he cower under pressure or deliver sane answers and strategies?
This was after all, Boris - the man who perhaps a year ago if you'd have said he'd be London's mayor nobody would have believed you.
Outside the committee room, queueing to get into Portcullis House where the meeting was taking place, it is clear Boris has reached somewhat celebrity status. As I wait patiently to get past security, a bunch of teenagers were behind me. Boris then rides up on his bike and enters the building through a special door, and I'm not joking, at least two of the kids went 'Ooo there's Boris!' with a squeal of delight in their voice. The same tone as if they'd just seen latest pop act The Ting Tings.
]]> Back inside Boris was doing well at deflecting, and sometimes answering, MPs' questions. He would not be drawn into whether knife crime was more serious a problem than terrorism, for example.Showing his public schoolboy background remarkably well, when asked if knife crime was really as serious as some papers made out, or whether it was just hyped-up, he said: "This is not the death of Mercutio."
Who was that, asks Labour MP Martin Salter. My education was not as posh as yours, he said.
Boris explains Mercutio was a character in a play by a "well-known English author called William Shakespeare". Romeo and Juliet, of course. And when asked to get back to the point, he insisted on commending the play to the committee. Well that's one way of deflecting the question I suppose, and it provided a bit of humour to an otherwise sombre debate.
All in all he covered topical people issues including: diversity in the Met police force (he vowed to try to get more black and minority ethnic staff into roles as a top priority); extending PCSO powers a little (though he ruled out giving PCSOs the powers of arrest); recruitment strategies (he is no longer divided about whether to poach staff from neighbouring forces) and the Olympics (the Met will be ready for such a challenge).
The meeting was over just as soon as it began when Boris had other things to attend to. You can watch the whole thing at http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/VideoPlayer.aspx?meetingId=2287&rel=ok
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That's a significant percentage of you who don't feel you are getting a good return on the energy you're putting into your role, if this research is to be believed. Perhaps these findings suggest that you should be doing more to tackle the sources of such gloom?
Personnel Today's weekly Top Job section regularly includes the question: 'What would you like your children to do?' Apart from the obvious 'whatever makes them happy' response, your desires range from the typically respectable lawyers, doctors and forensic pathologists to becoming a teenage tennis prodigy, and my personal favourite, from Nicola McGouldrick, head of HR at Bigmouthmedia: 'a cosmetic surgeon and domestic goddess, so I can be taken care of in my twilight years'.
Perhaps what's more intriguing is that none of you have ever said HR. What should we make of that?
]]> It may not be your preferred choice for your offspring, but the Hudson research did find that half of the 250 HR respondents would recommend their career. So not all bad, then.Still, maybe it's time you benchmarked yourselves against other HR departments to really see how you size up?
Over the past few weeks, hundreds of HR professionals across the country have been singing their HR departments' praises, with online entries for Personnel Today's Best Places to Work in HR 2008 flooding in.
With just 10 days to go until the closing date, don¹t miss out on the opportunity to rate your own HR department we've made it easier than ever this year. So whatever type of organisation you work in large or small, public or private please take the time to participate. To take part, go to www.personneltoday.com/bestplaces
]]>The government has announced plans to encourage young women to consider careers as plumbers and electricians, rather than taking the more traditional routes into hairdressing and childminding. According to skills secretary John Denham, "Nearly half of all apprentices are women, but ... we need more women to take up apprenticeships, especially in areas such as engineering and construction, to tackle current skills shortages".
Women took home seven out of 12 prizes at this week's national apprenticeship awards, with three of them coming from industries with a predominantly male workforce. The arrival of young women on apprenticeship schemes is adding an element of competition - male apprentices are keen not to be outshone by women, particularly in areas which were traditionally their preserve. Says Catherine Turner of JTL, which runs programmes to encourage women to consider careers in construction, "It's raising the standard, because the boys don't want the girls to beat them."
There has been a marked increase in the number of girls signing up for apprenticeships, with 30 starting plumbing courses in 2006-07, compared to 8 the previous year, and 81 opting to train as electricians the same year, a 125% increase on the previous year.
It will be interesting to see how the government goes about tempting girls to take the non-traditional route.
Any working parent will tell you that any unexpected time they take off for their children they spend worrying about how they are perceived at work. On their return, they invariably redouble their efforts to make up for the time they had to spend away.
]]> Most UK employers would not be adversely affected if the Government extended this right. After all, there is no incentive to abuse the right to time off as it is generally unpaid. Advances in technology, especially the dreaded BlackBerry, mean that staff can work flexibly from home anyway.Surely the sort of people who would abuse the right to take time off for dependants are the ones who escape the net of organisations' failing absence management systems? As with any absence, as long as line managers police it well, it shouldn't become a burden.
]]>As this is a view expressed by the managing director of one of the leading names on the high street, does it truly indicate the way the wind is blowing in boardrooms across the UK?
The idea put forward by Boots' managing director Alex Gourlay suggests that top employers have yet to be fully convinced of the business case for diversity if they were, surely there would be no need for financial incentives in the form of tax breaks to operate a more diverse workforce?
]]> I don¹t need to lay out that business case here, I would be preaching to the converted. But Gourlay's comments show there is still some way to go in driving the message home among the higher echelons of business.The Government Equalities Office has immediately ruled out any chance of firms being incentivised to boost BME and female numbers. However, Race for Opportunity, a network of leading employers that promotes workplace diversity (of which Boots is a member), has been less dismissive.
Writing exclusively for Personnel Today this week, Barbara Follett, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for women and equality, said the low employment rate for ethnic minorities demonstrated the need for new laws to help boost their job chances.
Good employers don¹t need legislation or financial incentives to improve workplace diversity; they are already doing it. Forward-thinking HR practices led by innovative HR professionals mean these firms are forging ahead in the field of diversity.
I wonder what will be going through the mind of Boots' HR director when he picks up on his MD¹s comments? Feel free to write in and let us know at personneltoday@rbi.co.uk
]]>At a conference earlier this week for occupational health doctors , Dr Bill Gunnyeon, Director, Health, Work and Wellbeing and Chief Medical Adviser, Department for Work and Pensions, revealed some early findings of a report on GP attitudes to health and work that show GP attitudes have improved since the same report was done a year earlier.
The report, based on a survey in May 2008 shows that 54% of GPs are aware of the evidence that good work is good for health compared to only 36% the previous year. A third of them say they have changed their practice since becoming aware of this evidence and 51% say they feel able to provide better advice. If this carries on the nightmare of the sick note could become a thing of the past.
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