MP claims businesses face being 'sleepwalked into disaster' with new Employment Rights Bill
Kingswinford and South Staffordshire MP Mike Wood has warned that businesses could be "sleepwalked into disaster" by the Government's new Employment Rights Bill.
The Conservative Member of Parliament, who is also Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, has highlighted concerns the Bill will make it more expensive for businesses to operate by hiking the costs of employing workers and in turn making firms less likely to hire.
He expressed worries the Bill will also give trade unions "unlimited powers".
The Employment Rights Bill is part of the Labour Government’s Plan to Make Work Pay to help more people to stay in work, support workers’ productivity and improve living standards.
MP Mike Wood, however, said it comes on top of other tax rises hitting businesses including the National Insurance increase for employers and the rise in the National Living Wage - and he has urged businesses to join him and “stand up to Rachel Reeves”.
He has launched a campaign at https://www.mike4kss.com/campaigns/employmentrightsbill “so we can protect local jobs and keep our high street alive”.
He said: “Businesses across Kingswinford and South Staffordshire are telling me that things just keep getting tougher. But Labour’s Employment Rights Bill is set to make things even worse with more strikes and more red tape.
“That is why I have launched a campaign so that businesses are not sleepwalked into disaster.”
Shadow Business and Trade Secretary Andrew Griffith MP added: “The economy badly needs the growth that only businesses create.
“Yet Labour’s Bill is a trade union charter that will increase strikes, slash jobs and raise prices.
“Going back to 1970s-style domination by the unions is the very last thing Britain needs right now and shows just how little this socialist government understands business.”
The Bill has passed the committee stage and is moving on to the report phase on July 14 which will give MPs further chance to closely scrutinise it.
The Government has said the Bill aims to do away with one-sided flexibility, ensure workers get fair pay for a fair day’s work, prioritise family friendly rights and fairness, equality and the wellbeing of workers, modernise trade union legislation and improve the enforcement of employment rights.
Some of the key measures include ending zero-hours contracts by introducing rights to guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts and payments for short-notice cancellation of shifts, with corresponding rights for agency workers.
It would end unscrupulous ‘fire and rehire’ and ‘fire and replace’ practices by considering dismissals for failing to agree to a change in contract as automatically unfair, except where businesses genuinely have no alternative.
It would also remove the two-year qualifying period of employment for the right to claim unfair dismissal - making it a day-one right, while enabling employers to ensure an employee is a good fit for the job by establishing a new statutory probation period.
The Bill would also strengthen collective redundancy rights and statutory sick pay, make paternity leave and unpaid parental leave available from day one of employment, introduce new protections against dismissal of pregnant women, require employers to take ‘all reasonable steps’ to prevent sexual harassment and motivate employers to improve gender equality - among a host of other policy reforms.
