I’ve got to admit that I was nonplussed by Francis Maude’s comments yesterday about civil servants who are “too expensive” to sack, and are left “in limbo”. The Cabinet Office minister made his comments to the Public Affairs committee yesterday, defending the Coalition’s attempt to re-write the civil service redundancy deal.
His performance struck me as exemplifying the caring cutting that we are going to see more and more frequently. I can understand why a government that isn’t particularly sympathetic to its staff wants to cut the amount it spends on them, but the difficulty for Ministers is that it isn’t acceptable to say this in Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party. Read more »
Here are some videos from today’s employment regulation debate at Congress House. Brendan Barber and Howard Reed (independent economist) debated the cases for and against deregulation with David Frost (British Chamber of Commerce Director General) and Professor Francis Chittenden (Manchester Business School), with Christine Buckley in the chair. We’ve video of all four speakers’ opening arguments: Read more »
Over the last few decades the business lobby has never been slow to tell us that red tape destroys jobs. And by red tape they often mean decent rights for people at work. Before the introduction of the minimum wage and other rights, we were warned of rising unemployment and a reduction in job creation. But doomsday never came to pass – instead the UK experienced its longest period of growth for decades.
What brought that growth to an end was the biggest downturn in the world economy since the 1920s. Businesses have gone bust. Working people throughout the world have lost their jobs. Public services face deep cuts as countries struggle with the holes in their finances caused by the recession. Read more »
David Frost is Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce and will be debating the future of employment regulation against the TUC’s Brendan Barber at a lunchtime event on July 15. To help broaden the debate (and wind up our readers a bit) we asked him to set out his case in a guest post for us. You can read a TUC response here, or come to the debate itself by registering online at isderegulationdead.org.uk.
The title and topic for the BCC debate with the TUC – ‘Is deregulation dead?’ – would have received a very different answer at the beginning of 2010. Whilst deregulation was never ‘dead’ during the Labour Government’s 13 years, it was certainly sleeping. Our Burdens Barometer, which uses the Government’s own figures, shows that since 1998, business has been faced with £88.8bn of costs related to new regulation. The language during this period was more about better regulation than less regulation. The new Coalition Government has made it clear in their first 100 days that deregulation is very much alive and well, and will be a central theme of the new administration’s policies. Read more »
This new ToUChstone pamphlet challenges the neo-liberal assumption that economic success is contingent upon weakly regulated labour markets. Based on an extensive evidence review of the economic literature, it demonstrates that the case for unfettered free markets has been badly discredited and that fairer rights for workers are compatible with economic success – as well as bringing far better social outcomes.
The severe recession precipitated by the banking crisis of 2008 means the economy is likely to dominate policy debate in this election to a much greater extent than for any election since 1992, or even further back. But how will the economic crisis affect people’s views on the way the economy should move forward?
For thirty years, the mainstream economic orthodoxy was that the way to economic success lies in deregulating product, labour and financial markets as much as possible. Given that the banking crisis was an object lesson in how deregulation could, in some circumstances, deliver not economic success, but instead near-armageddon, we might have thought that this would lead to some reconsideration of whether deregulation was always and everywhere the best policy after all.
However, the proponents of deregulation – including the Conservative party (but also some leading politicians in the Liberal Democrats and Labour parties), business groups such as the Institute of Directors, Confederation of British Industry and British Chambers of Commerce, and right-wing think thanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs have instead insisted that the economic crisis means we need to deregulate still further, particularly in the labour market. Read more »
The UK is currently moving out of the deepest recession since WWII. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, and many remain at risk of long-term worklessness. However, unemployment is not the only challenge facing post-recession Britain, as work itself is not always a route out of poverty: increasing proportions of working households have an income of below 60% of median income (the Government’s preferred measure of poverty).
There are multiple reasons for persistent in-work poverty, including low pay, low in-work benefits for families without children, poor progression opportunities for many in low-paid jobs, a lack of access to services such as good quality childcare and the ongoing gender pay gap. But there is seldom any discussion about the ways in which poor rights at work can consign people to poverty. Read more »
Nicola has written for Left Foot Forward about the response from parts of the business lobby to the Government’s introduction of legislation to make the six months of maternity leave transferrable between parents. She disputes that new rights will impose ‘enormous costs’ on employers, and asks:
“If de-regulation is so necessary, why are so many other successful economies surviving with better protection for people at work? If regulation is such a key determinant of economic success, why have the US and the UK suffered so badly in the downturn? The truth is that some of the world’s most productive economies combine good rights at work, strong trade unions and low unemployment. The idea that wealth creation only comes about when few have rights is simply wrong in a modern knowledge economy.”
Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (MPs and Lords) has published a report today (Wednesday 16 December) which looks at how human rights can be improved at the workplace, home and abroad. The Committee criticises the Government for not having a coherent strategy to address the impact on human rights of British business. It is a serious, understated report which makes the case for a long term review of the global human rights impact of British business, but it also makes some immediate points about the domestic scene. It suggests that British industrial relations laws are out of step with our international obligations and, to quote the report, “we doubt the compatibility of the Government’s blacklisting proposals with the UK’s international human rights obligations.” And it says ”we anticipate revisiting this issue.” The TUC welcomed the report.
More broadly, and unambiguously, the Joint Committee notes that
“the right to freedom of association, the associated right to strike, the right to trade union membership and the right to collective bargaining are rights recognised in the international human rights obligations of the UK and overseen by the European Court of Human Rights, the ILO and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the ILO Committee of Experts consider that current domestic law on the right to strike and the right to collective bargaining places undue restrictions on those rights.”
David Cameron is to say today that he wants to “repatriate” employment and social law. I do not see how this can be done without changes to the EU’s treaties. It would therefore require the unaminous support of every EU member. Every other EU country has a veto.
Ireland is constitutionally required to hold a referendum on treaty changes. So Ireland would have to have a referendum on a new UK opt-out. That would be an interesting campaign.
We have now truly bid farewell to summertime. The clocks have changed, the nights are drawing in and the leaves are starting to fall. Wouldn’t it be great if we had another bank holiday today to cheer us all up?
The TUC has joined together with the main voluntary organisations to call for a new bank holiday called ‘Community Day’, on the last Monday in October (i.e. it would be today if we had it this year) to celebrate volunteering and encourage people to take part in community events.
We think the new holiday should be introduced in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London Olympics and Paralympics with a fanfare to seal a triumphant year for volunteers across the UK. Here’s a joint letter we’ve sent to the press: Read more »
I imagine other Touchstone contributors will want to comment on this announcement. But just to say quickly here what a truly terrible decision it is. Read more »
