Dear Editor
I was rather unsurprised that the majority voted “No” in your poll asking “Should the EU be allowed to trample over UK employment laws?”. The blatantly leading nature of the question was worthy of Robert Mugabe – and certainly not the sort of question any HR person worthy of themselves would ask in a recruitment interview.
As any HR person knows, the EU has been key in developing much of the best law which provides employee protection and involvement – from anti-discrimination law to health and safety rules and consultation regulations. Left to their own devices, current and previous UK governments of both main parties would have been likely to have maintained an employment relations environment akin to pre-Industrial Revolution “master and servant” constructs.
Without the fairly limited intervention of EU workplace legislation, the European single market would be seriously imbalanced in favour of those states and multinationals keenest on absolutely minimising workers’ terms and conditions in favour of maximising shareholder profit. Ultimately, this would be to the detriment of good HR practice and all of us (the overwhelming majority of the working population) who are the employees, not the owners, of the organisations and companies we work for.
Adrian Cruden
Personnel & Training Manager
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