Employment

Radical employment law reforms

We have all seen the press reports about the Government's proposals to 'shake up' employment law in what has been described as one of the most radical overhauls in this area for many years. Vince Cable has stated that the proposals will not threaten job security and would save millions of pounds. However many commentators, including trade union officials, have stated that they fear this is the start of a return to the 'dark ages' of employment law and a 'hire and fire' culture. 

You will have seen our previous blogs about the Government's proposal to increase the period of qualifying service for unfair dismissal claims from one year to two years and proposals about the introduction of fees for issuing claims in the employment tribunal. 

Some of the other proposals which have now been made are:

• consultation on reducing the minimum period for redundancy consultation to 60, 45 or 30 days;
• changes to Criminal Records Bureau checks such that individuals would be able to take checks from an old job to a new job without having to apply for checks again;
• Employment Judges to sit alone in unfair dismissal cases rather than being part of a panel;
• a system of lodging employment tribunal claims via Acas with a view to Acas undertaking mediation on the claim before it goes to the employment tribunal
   

A further proposal is for consultation to take place on "protected conversations" between employers and employees. The idea is that an employer would be able to have what the Government has described as a "frank conversation" with an underperforming employee without the contents of that conversation being admissible in any later employment tribunal proceedings. It is easy to see how this would benefit employers, however it is also easy to understand the concerns from employees about how this would work in practice and how it could be open to abuse.
 
What is your view on the proposals? How do you think they would affect your business or the relationship between employer and employee?

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