Your Employment Is At Risk

As the Green Party votes on its approach to Brexit, some thoughts on what the real priorities should be for party policy on the British workplace. This article was first published on the Green Left website and in the Watermelon newsletter distributed at Green Party and Global Greens conference in Liverpool.

In the run up to the referendum, the Leave campaign talked repeatedly about the need to remove EU regulations that allegedly hold back the UK. As the debate descended into little more than internecine Tory grunting, neither side offered any explanation of what EU regulations cover, leaving voters to wonder what they were never mind their merit. And since the vote for Brexit, the Greens’ focus on staying in the Single Market may mean that we lose sight of the need to defend what truly is at risk – and what sort of society we could be looking to build instead.

While there is no question that a wide range of employment rights, especially in respect of discrimination, do derive from EU directives and agreements, many more do not but are arguably even more at risk in the gung-ho “entrepreneurial” environment May and her ilk are seeking to craft. While we argue about access to a free trade zone that is in many respects inimical to our long-term aims of localised and sustainable economics, employers’ think tanks are joining with their Tory allies to seek a bonfire not so much of EU regulations but of all employment rights.

Their adopted tone however is not the shotgun blast of the past, but rather an insidious, devious range of tactics aimed to divide employees and play people off against each other. The “choices approach” where employers offer staff a menu of rights linked to their performance at work – i.e., longer maternity leave for prized workers; varied periods of probation before employment protection is activated, etc – will be formulated to appeal to enough people, initially, to gain some level of acceptance. All this is proclaimed in the name of national competitiveness, when in fact the collective concept of “national” couldn’t be any further from the reality of corporations carving up even more of the cake for themselves. Having in effect destroyed collective trade union rights, they are now finally coming for the rights of individual employees and workers.

Yet we are mistaken in seeing the EU as a guarantor of our workplace security. Its’ flagship Acquired Rights Directive (better known in the UK as TUPE) offers little more than a fig-leaf of protection to transferred workers. Similarly, Brussels and the ECJ were nowhere to be seen when the Lib Dem Ministers in the Coalition introduce fee arrangements which have led to an 80% collapse in employment tribunal hearings.

The protections we have against unfair dismissal, the right to a written contract, the right to equal pay for work of equal value, the right to paid holidays and to bank holidays, the national minimum wage – all these come from British law, not European.

So are Greens making a strategic mistake in putting our energy into remaining in the single market in the belief that it protects workers? In truth, what workplace protections it does require are ultimately about ensuring no single member can undercut another rather than about the inherent rights of workers. It is about regulated capitalism, not human rights.

As the EU faces major “populist” challenges to liberalise its economy, in spite of the fact it already largely has been, Greens need to argue for positive rights in the British workplace as these will be squeezed out regardless of our membership status. It is imperative we use this time of change to advocate for the type of economy we want to develop, one which is not dependent on the protection of some distant behemoth of questionable repute, but rather one that rests firmly and deeply in our society and its shared values.

Now is the time to be calling for a business environment that gives breaks to co-operatives, community enterprises, employee buyouts and takeovers. Now is when we should be advocating hardest for the living wage AND the citizens’ income (not either or, but both) and even for some level of protectionism as we take key industries into democratic ownership. Corporate law should be transformed to end its cosy legalisation of profit-maximisation as PLCs sole objective to instead a range of duties to employees, communities and the environment. And we must be clear that we are happy to show the door to those who threaten to go – that is real “taking back control”.

Alongside this, we should be arguing for a root and branch change to the whole employment relationship. Incredibly, though maybe unsurprisingly, our employment rules still rest on the 18th century Master and Servant laws. While heavily modified over the years, the idea that you are a servant and your employer is your Master remains the central legal concept in the employment relationship. In any democratic society, this is a complete nonsense and it is time to turn it on its head, prefiguring of course a transformation of ownership rights and the control of enterprises.

For ecosocialists such as those of us in Green Left, there is also a wider debate to be had as we move towards a world where technology has the capacity to set more and more free from labour and how the abundance in both time and resources is used equitably and sustainably. The day is not far away when, as human labour is less central to material productivity and service delivery, the whole concept of paid employment can be done away with. As we develop that argument, of course, we will be charged with everything from utopian dreaming to economic treason, but as we know, if we don’t map the path for real change, capitalism will do it for us and take our planet in a very different, very hostile and very dark direction.

Flexible Working: giving with one hand

From today, everyone with more than 26 weeks service has the right to request flexible working and their employer needs to seriously consider it. Consider - not grant it. If there is a good reason (and the definition of a good reason is extremely broad), it can still be declined.

Unfortunately, if you have less than two years' service, as the Coalition has severely restricted access to employment tribunals and knocked employment protection rights back from 12 to 24 months, there is nothing to stop your employer sacking you for making such a request and getting away with it.

Give with one hand...
- the right to request flexible working, and next year a slight, over-hyped variant on existing provisions on shared parental leave

And take away...
- protection against unfair dismissal in your first two years with any new employer
- free access to an employment tribunal to claim unfair dismissal (now £400 charge)
- free access to redress against sexism, racism, homophobia, disablism or religious discrimination in the workplace (now a £1,200 charge)
- legal aid for employment cases (already sparse, now virtually abolished)
- reasonable periods of consultation before large scale redundancies (periods halved)
- the employers' obligation to protect staff from harassment from clients and customers in the workplace (abolished)

All this to drive us to the "flexible economy" that Cameron and Farage hope can make massive profits for their corporate paymasters as they undercut the (slightly) fairer conditions on the European mainland.

So don't be fooled by Lib Dem Employment Minister Jo Swinney's honeyed words of workplace progress today. In the scheme of things, it is just some spit and polish on yet more Coalition crap.

First they came for the trade unions; and now they are coming for us.

85% of us are employees; but more and more, our rights are history.

Sacking With CONfidence: The Epilogue - "You're Fired!"

This is the last in an occasional series of blogs on the Coalition Government's assault on employment rights - the rights that give all of us just a tiny bit more security against pernicious treatment and even summary dismissal from our livelihoods.

It is the last because the assault is over and, I am sorry to say, the Lib Dem/Conservative has had its way. All of us who are employees - which is about 85% of the working population - are substantially less well protected than before 2010.

Since then, with the piss-taking pseudo-leftwing Lib Dem Vince Cable at the helm of employment "reforms", the Government first off extended from one to two years the length of time someone has to work for an employer before they are protected against unfair dismissal. Let's get that in perspective: at any time in the first 24 months of working for an employer, you can be dismissed for absolutely no reason at all. Your manager doesn't like you? You're fired! You come in late because the bus was cancelled? You're fired! Your boss doesn't like the colour of your jacket? You're fired!

And you've absolutely no comeback. Nada! Zilch! Forget the Daily Mail stories about pots of gold in compensation - you're out and you're not coming back; you've not got a penny and who will ever employ you again, a sacked worker?

As long as you survive two years in a job, you do finally acquire the right to not be unfairly dismissed. Note - unfairly. Because always, under all employment protection laws, employers have always had a right to fairly dismiss you. So, if you are persistently late, and you are warned not to be, you could be fired fairly. If you steal or assault a colleague, you could be fired fairly - as long as you were given the right to respond to any accusations against you and the employer's decision to dismiss was based on a reasonable assessment of the balance of probabilities: proof beyond reasonable doubt was never required, just a fair investigation and a meeting to hear the employee's side.

How would something as plainly reasonable as this constitute the shocking red tape strangling our apparently cowed entrepreneurs that Cable and co made out it was? Yet almost from Day One, with his Employers' Charter, he was busy reminding employers of how easy it was to get rid of people - and promising to make it even easier. He restored the qualifying period to the level Margaret Thatcher set it at. And more, much more than that.

In the past, if you were dismissed, you could seek redress for being unfairly dismissed if you had twelve months' service (back in the 1970s, it was six months). You could go to an Employment Tribunal, which would hear your case and your employers, and if it found in your favour, it could award recompense. Contrary to the handful of unusual settlements for large sums of money, most awards were low: on average, rarely more than £9,500 with the median award around £4,500 even although you had been found to have unfairly lost your employment.

But this was still too much for Cable. So he brought in a new barrier to workplace justice: at the same time as he viciously restricted the already small amount of legal aid available for employment cases, he introduced charges to lodge a case. If someone wants to pursue an unfair dismissal claim now, they need to pay a minimum fee of £400 - even although logic dictates that in many cases, dismissed and out of work, the complainant will not have this money, or at least not be able to afford it. And, even worse, if their complaint is about discrimination on grounds of sex, race, disability, religion or sexual orientation, then although you can bring a case even before two years' service, you have to pay a fee up to 300% higher than the unfair dismissal fee: over £1,200.

Some remissions of charges are permitted for the very poorest, but if your household has more than just £3,000 in savings, you have to pay in full  - and evidence shows that this very disproportionately affects women. This is borne out further by the fact that of all categories of cases, the fall in sex discrimination claims is the highest. Similarly, there has been a 68% fall in claims for non-payment of wages; when workers have to pay £390 to pursue such a claim, can you imagine why the numbers have fallen?

Percentage fall in tribunal claims by type of claim

Type of claim	Fall in claims
Sex discrimination	77%
Disability	58%
Race	57%
Sexual orientation	75%
Age	63%
Religion and belief	60%
Pregnancy related dismissal	59%
Equal treatment rights for part-time workers	79%

So, let's recap: if you are dismissed because the boss didn't share your sense of humour or you got him the wrong sandwich at lunchtime, you pay £390 to take a case forward. That's bad enough. But if you were sacked because you refused to sleep with the boss, you have to find £1,200. But of course, Cable hails from the institutionally sexist and bullying-riddled Lib Dems, so its easy to see where the mindset originates for this sort of "justice". He also knows quite a bit about charges and fines although in his case he has us to bail him out.

And the outcome of the new tribunal charges?

Well, after just 12 months in operation, the new rules have delivered what Cable and the Conservatives wanted. The employers' organisation the CBI has welcomed the Government's "unclogging" of tribunals and now The laughingly titled Ministry of Justice has reported that there has been a 79% decline in the number of employment tribunal cases. Four out of five claims have been stopped in their tracks.
Little wonder. And shame on Clegg, Cameron and co for claiming to support "hard-working parents" and "alarm clock Britain." Now earning 10% less now than pre-recession, never in forty years have these hard-working people been more vulnerable and less protected against the whims of their profit-seeking employers.

And no one gains, no one but the already cash-soaked corporations that dole out billions in bonuses and dividends off the backs of increasingly marginalised workers and exploited consumers. The majority - the vast majority - of us see our rights diminished, our security reduced and our livelihoods ever more dependent on the random goodwill of employers rather than the basic reassurance of a modicum of employee rights. It is hardly a recipe for a happy, productive workplace or a successful country.

Vince - hasn't always paid his own charges promptly.

But the alarm clock will soon be ringing for the Cabinet of Millionaires: in just over one year, it will be time for the 85% of us who are employees to sling these duplicitous charlatans out without notice and tell the Con Dems, "You're fired!"

Enterprise Britain

The Coalition's supposedly "red-tape free flexible economy" has been exposed for what it is this week - exploitative and seedy in turn; yet at the very moment the torchlight is shone into some of the darker corners of the British workplace, new employment tribunal rules and the near destruction of legal aid will make it harder still for anyone to obtain justice in the workplace.

First has come the revelation that a number of prestigious and highly profitable organisations operate zero-hours contracts where staff are guaranteed no work or pay at all, but have to be available at short notice at the whim of the employer and in many cases need to obtain permission to work for anyone else. The Royal Household, never a paragon of good employment practice, heads this list of shame, followed by Cineworld and a string of retailers. This morning, the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development released the results of a survey of employers which suggests one million people in Britain are on such precarious contracts - five times the official government figure but almost certainly a substantial underestimate of the real picture. The voluntary and public sectors, reflecting (in many, though not all cases) the impact of austerity, use such arrangements far more frequently than the private sector - almost twice as often.

Some, including the Green Party leader Nathalie Bennett, have called for zero hours - or casual contracts - to be abolished. A total ban could be misjudged - there are, occasionally, circumstances where a casual arrangement can be to the benefit of both parties, as long as it is genuinely one where there is no mutual obligation on either side and it is for truly occasional work. However, many of those on zero hours arrangements in fact report being used pretty much on a full time basis with their employers demanding their presence when needed with no real opportunity to decline the "offer" of work.

It is dubious practice - where someone is used regularly, contrary to what the media and many campaigners have been saying, the law in fact applies similar and in many respects identical rights as it does to those on more regular contracts. Pro rata to time worked, a casual employee accrues the same rights to holiday pay, sick pay and employment protection as anyone on a more regularised contract - in law. But in reality, their employers often don't recognise these rights and, in the absence of unionised workplaces, the only way someone can seek to assert their rights is to go to an employment tribunal.

And, as of this week, it is now much harder for anyone to do so - to take a case, you will now need to pay a deposit of up to £1,200 - a tall order if you are on a zero hours contract or have just been dismissed. If you lose your case, which most people do (contrary to media myth), you forfeit the money - on the other hand, even if you win, with the average payout for losing your livelihood hovering around £7,000, it's not exactly the most effective process for realising justice. Moreover, legal aid has now been withdrawn from nearly all employment cases, so aside from your deposit, you will now either have to fight your case by yourself, go to a no-win, no-fee lawyer or hire a solicitor with the near certainty that even if you win hands down, you are likely to end up out of pocket.

The Tories and Lib Dems claim that this will stop vexatious claims - well, it might, but surely there would have been an easier way of filtering these out. What the combined impact of the legal changes and the ever-growing casualisation of employment and insecurity of employment means is that even the most shocking abuses of employment law will now increasingly go unchallenged - which is the true agenda behind these changes (Vince Cable, the Cabinet Minister for business, has already doubled the probation period for one to two years before employees gain any employee protection, as well as making it easier for employers to "suggest" to staff they should leave via "protected conversations" where there is little effective comeback). More and more, bad employment practices and greedy owners and shareholders will slice their pounds of flesh from their workforce knowing that they are virtually unassailable. Collective rights were destroyed twenty years ago with the defeat of the unions by the last Tory Government; now this one is wiping out the rights of individual employees too.

But no worries, as they keep telling us, there is always work for the willing. Just this week, in spite of David Cameron railing about the need to curb internet pornography last week, it seems live porn is ok - a Government Jobmatch website has been advertising jobs for lap dancers in contravention of their own rules. This includes vacancies at the "Sugar & Spice" American Style Table Dancing Club, which offers topless and naked dancers.

How long before "Gentlemen's Clubs" are sponsoring apprenticeship pole dancers? How long before someone turning down such a "career opportunity" has her benefits cut? It seems only a matter of time and yet more breath-taking flexibility on the part of our enterprising Ministers.

Coming next: the wiping out of workplace safety. Welcome to the New Victorian Age.

There's always moonlight and music, and lap-dancing. (source- "The Independent")

Jape Number 54: Gideon tears up the Magna Carta

"Workers of the world unite!" Gideon, son of privilege, gassed to his baying blue hordes in Birmingham this afternoon.

A couple of weeks ago, appearing on the US programme the Letterman Show, British PM David Cameron guffawed as he failed the UK citizenship test by, among other things, failing to explain what the Magna Carta, the document widely seen as commencing constitutional government in England, translated as. He later feigned that he did know but didn't want it to seem he has Latin seeping from every pore and orifice.

But today, when his school pal and multi-millonaire Chancellor, George Gideon Osborne, gave his annual talk to the blue rinse and the Sleeping Dead at the Tory conference in Birmingham, it became swiftly evident that the Coalition Government is utterly ignorant of the contents of the said document, especially Clause 29 which states that "we will sell to no man...either justice nor right."

What a jolly jape this Flashman of Finance had to unveil for the chavs - give up your rights to unfair dismissal and get £2,000 of tax free shares, allegedly making you an owner of your company (though apparently one that the other owners can fire with impunity). On top of that, if your a gel, well, if you get a bun in the oven, you will need to tell your company two months sooner than now that you need to take time orf to have the kid - makes you wonder why you ladies really bother working, what, what? Unless of course you live in rented; then having a kid is just your benefits meal ticket and you know what we think of that!

Torn up by Tories - the Great Charter

Oh, how they laughed at Little Piggy as he mocked the Marxists, turning their cri de couer on its head. He had been up all night preparing for it and he really was most excited...
This has to be the most twisted, sick-minded notion to emerge yet from the Coalition, all in the name of supporting the multitude of would-be entrepreneurs poised to enrich our country, if only they can do so without paying decent wages or settling their tax bills. All so they can piss some of their trickledown wealth onto the cracked streets of impoverished communities and vulnerable people.

Encouraging workers to sell their rights takes us into new realms of modern slavery; indeed, it may soon be that smaller, start-up companies will use this approach as the default one - soon it may be standard for people working in smaller companies to have no employment rights; and then the larger ones will argue that this makes them competitively disadvantaged so they need to strip out protection as well, all for a bag of transient tax free cash. What a wheeze indeed, one apparently endorsed by that waste of space Vince Cable - yes, the same guy who attacked Tories for getting a kick out of firing people.

Somehow, with the Coalition, just when you think that it couldn't possibly get worse, it does. We plumb new depths of inhumane, perverse politics. Just how much worse will this get?

Will workers be offered a bonus if they sign waivers on using dangerous equipment? After all, having to maintain safe stuff is just such a drag on our budding entrepreneurs. How soon before single parents can sell their kids off to save the state benefits money? How long before the deeply indebted can "redeem" what they owe Wonga.com by converting their loans into serfdom?

Boundaries are crossed with this latest initiative from the Party of Privilege and their delusional fags Cable and Clegg - boundaries not even Mrs Thatcher neared in her wildest fantasies. We are going back, beyond even Victorian "values". King John (yes, the bad guy from Robin Hood and signatory of the original Magna Carta) would be proud of little Gideon. The Tories like to preserve traditional values - but it seems these are traditional values that go even further back than we suspected.

At least King John had the grace to get dysentery and die after running up a huge deficit to fund his wars; we seem likely to be stuck with Gideon's verbiage until at least May 2015 - just one month short of the 800th anniversary of the great revolt that forced John to sign the Great Charter (yes, Dave, some of us paid attention in Latin class...)

We can only hope that if history repeats itself in one direction, it can do so in the opposite as well.

Workers of the world unite! Chains for sale...