The government’s Employment Rights Bill was robustly debated by CBI chair Rupert Soames and TUC general secretary Paul Nowak at yesterday’s Acas annual conference.
In a session chaired by Acas’s chief conciliator, Marina Glasgow, Soames accused the government of failing to listen to businesses’s concerns about the proposals, which include curtailing zero hours contracts, conferring new rights from day one of employment, ending fire and rehire, and offering more statutory sick pay.
The CBI chair said he acknowledged the democratic mandate for the Employment Rights Bill but felt that there had been “no acceptance that someone like me will not employ people if there’s lots of risk attached.” He warned that the UK could see unemployment levels akin to Spain’s (10.4% as opposed to the EU average of 5.9%) and that new rights would lead to even greater pressure on employment tribunals than they already faced.
Employment Rights Bill
Zero hours rights to be extended
On zero hours, Soames added that the poor employment practices of a few employers did not necessitate new rules on minimum contracted hours, which would harm the working lives of workers who needed full flexibility.
Nowak responded that Spain had seen unemployment fall in recent years from highs of 15.4% in 2018.
Soames had been referring to labour reforms in Spain in late 2021, which saw increased restrictions on the use of temporary contracts and greater flexibility in the use of permanent contracts. Researchers have found that these have reduced temporary employment in the private sector, but, overall, data analysis shows that the increased restrictions on hiring temporary workers have not hindered job creation.
Nowak said: “For the last couple of decades, we have tested to destruction the low pay, low rights status quo.
“We need to level the playing field so that decent businesses aren’t undercut by those who don’t do right by their staff.”
Soames said that the UK had become much poorer relative to other countries: “25 years ago the income per head in the UK was roughly the same as the US. Now it’s less than the poorest state in the US. It is far less than Germany – something has gone wrong. Collectively we have a big problem here if our country has got massively poorer.”
For Nowak, this was proof that the status quo needed changing, something that the Employment Rights Bill would help achieve. He pointed out that while the Office of Budget Responsibility suggested that the Bill would cost businesses £5bn, the calculation did not reflect the wider benefits of the measures. These could include increased productivity, fewer sick days, better employee engagement, more upskilling and training, less discrimination and higher retention.
However, Soames suggested the main impact of the Bill would be to increase the already weighty employment tribunal case backlog and cause a large investment to be made in recruiting judges.
Soames recognised that the national minimum wage, introduced in 1999 had been a success despite businesses’ initial criticism. This was because the government had listened, and set up the Low Pay Commission to be independent of ministers.
He added that a similar conciliatory approach could smooth the introduction of the Employment Rights Bill.
Nowak concluded that: “Neither Rupert or I would honestly believe we could bring up a family on the minimum wage and a zero hours contract.
“Neither of us have to worry about not being able to pay the bills because we took a day off sick or were sacked unfairly.
“And neither of us have to accept being paid less because of our gender, our race, or disability, so why is it acceptable that that’s exactly the experience of millions of people out there in workplaces?”
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