Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Burden of guilt weighs heavier than red tape

by Personnel Today 15 Feb 2000
by Personnel Today 15 Feb 2000

National officer, Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union

Are HR managers losing the plot? I hear the old tunes being played. Legal
complaints are equated with excess bureaucracy. Managers are falling back on
the old red-tape whinges.

The Government is apparently to blame for imposing all sorts of extra
regulation. If the whole thing can be blamed on Brussels bureaucrats, fresh
from straightening bent bananas, then so much the better.

It is nonsense, and HR managers ought to know better. The Blair Government
looks at the law and work in a new way for Britain. The minimum wage is here to
stay and, delightfully, Mr Portillo and friends do not now provide an
alternative perspective on it. Trade union power is not about to be unleashed
on an over-stretched, supine management. The Employment Rights Act will not let
the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) hand over workplace representation
without strict criteria being met. The CAC will also ban all unions from a
workplace if they think the application threatens sterile competition between
unions.

The point is this. The Blair Government is determined to see all of us have
a minimum floor of rights at work as individuals. These rights are to be judged
in terms of individual cases of fairness, with the legal system holding the
coats between employer and employee. The new role for unions is to match
employers’ resources with legal expertise to ensure individuals know their
rights and exercise them.

If strikes are a thing of the past, unhappiness at work is still very much
with us. There are 100,000 employment tribunals a year. It is surely preferable
that unions support people with one eye on the individual’s case and the other
firmly on the long-term relationship within the company.

Above all, the continuing saga of personal injury at work more than
justifies government regulation over safety issues and trade union
participation in the compensation process. Last year, unions settled over
50,000 cases and obtained £308m for members with a success rate of 96 per cent.
Most unions now provide a 24-hour free advice service, way beyond direct injury
cases.

Some unions are extending the benefits of free union legal services to
family members. The Engineers and Electricians union has more than 20,000
personal injury cases underway at the moment and recently secured over £1m for
a roofer who fell after working without safety equipment and suffered brain
damage.

In compensation and tribunal cases, the law at work is here to stay.
Managers should welcome union legal intervention against a background where law
replaces the trial of strength associated with yesteryear’s industrial
disputes. And if their companies have done nothing wrong, they have nothing to
fear, do they?

By John Lloyd

Avatar
Personnel Today

previous post
Consult… listen… act
next post
Industrial unrest hits all-time low

You may also like

The Search for Talent: Six Major Employer Pitfalls

24 May 2022

Grants scheme set up to support women’s health...

16 May 2022

How music can help to ease anxiety at...

9 May 2022

OH will be key to navigating ‘second pandemic’...

14 Apr 2022

OH urged to be aware of abortion consultations...

8 Apr 2022

How coached eCBT is returning the workplace to...

8 Apr 2022

Why now is the time to plug the...

7 Apr 2022

Two-thirds of shift workers feel health affected by...

18 Mar 2022

TUC warns of April Covid risk assessment ‘confusion’

14 Mar 2022

Consultation on new NHS cancer standards, as waits...

11 Mar 2022
  • Strathclyde Business School expands its Degree Apprenticeship offer in England PROMOTED | The University of Strathclyde is expanding its programmes...Read more
  • The Search for Talent: Six Major Employer Pitfalls PROMOTED | The Great Resignation continues unabated...Read more
  • Navigating the widening “Skills Confidence Gap” in 2022, and beyond PROMOTED | Cornerstone OnDemand conducted a global study...Read more
  • Apprenticeships are the solution to your recruitment problems PROMOTED | Apprenticeships have the pulling power...Read more
  • What it really means to be mentally fit PROMOTED | What is mental fitness...Read more
  • How music can help to ease anxiety at work PROMOTED | A lot has happened since March 2020, hasn’t it?...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2022

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2022 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+