The continuing attempts via the Health & Safety law review, the Red Tape Challenge and the DWP's review of regulating bodies activities; and now the Beecroft report on employment legislation and practices, completes the Tory's strategy to remove completely all forms of UK worker's legal protection down to the levels in the United States.

Indeed if the Government have their way, Royal Mail, BT and o2 will be just 3 of the major blue chip companies and thousands of SME’s that tear up their current employment practices, discipline procedures and employment contracts.

Further, Trade Unions will find it extremely difficult to defend their members in a situation were the law allows businesses, large and small, to dismiss their employees for absolutely no reason, and without stating a reason.

These intentions were leaked at the weekend, in a report for the Government, by Adrian Beecroft recommending such actions.

In response, yesterday afternoon, 22nd May,  Byron Taylor from UnionsTogether hand-delivered a 6,000-strong letter to Vince Cable at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, saying we need more hiring, not more firing. The timing couldn’t have been more crucial.

Last year, David Cameron asked a venture capitalist called Adrian Beecroft, who has donated more than £500,000 to the Conservative Party, to write a report outlining his suggested changes to our rights at work.

After months of delay,  Labour MPs forced the Government to finally publish his report on Monday night. That version of the report, which excluded the executive summary, fulfilled the worst fears of workers and their Trade Unions, and proved that the Tory-led coalition government are hell-bent on introducing US employment culture of higher and fire at will, into the UK.
 
This is an attack on every single working person in the country, and requires nothing short of protestation on a grand scale.

Whilst the Trade Union leaders will no doubt make their views known, each and every worker in the country needs also to do their bit in making their opposition to these draconian measures which will take us back to the 1700s; known to their own MPs. Details of how to do this are at then end of this news item.

Mr Beecroft made his intentions crystal clear in the draft of the report that was leaked at the weekend, which included an executive summary excluded from the Government’s published version.

This included the greatest condemnation of his proposals to allow unfettered dismissal at any time of employees, which was removed from the published document:

On page 4 of the excluded Executive Summary of the leaked report, Beecroft wrote:

Again, this statement is based on no actual facts, but is merely the author's opinion. This is the case throughought the report, but the Tories will not let something like that stop them from destroying workers rights.

Furthermore, the proposal to take away job security from every single working person in Britain by introducing “no fault dismissal” is only the beginning.

Without offering a shred of evidence, the Beecroft Report claims that ripping up rights at work across the board will create jobs and help end the recession.

In fact he admits, in his executive summary, to the contrary and offers only an opinion of the outcome of such policies as opposed to evidence:

The Government will undoubtedly wish to action Beecroft’s plans to scrap all employment rights. Their austerity programme is making the economy worse, not better, and has pushed us into a double dip recession.

Up until now, Vince Cable’s Business Department has led the way on watering down rights at work, claiming that doing so will create growth - his department is still consulting on whether or not to implement no fault dismissal.

There is a real risk that substantial parts of the Beecroft report could become law, adn precisely this was stated by Cameron in the House of Commons today (22nd May) during Prime Minister Questions. Responding to Ed Miliband, he commended the report, saying:

"We need to make it easier for businesses to grow, for businesses to take people on, for businesses to expand. The Beecroft report, which I commissioned, had a number of excellent ideas that we are taking forward.

"We are doubling the qualifying period for unfair dismissal, we are exempting businesses with less than 10 people from new EU regulations, we are exempting a million people who are self-employed from health and safety. We are consulting on no-fault dismissal, but only for micro-businesses. It was a good report and it's right that we take forward its best measures."

It is imperative that you email your MP now, irrespective of the political party they are from, to ask him/her to oppose this attack on workers employment rights. If the Tories get away with this, they will, undoubtedly move after the next general election to attack the rights to be in a Trade Union, and formulate a legislative straight-jacket which will completely eradicate the effectiveness of Trade Unions in the workplace. Already within Tory think-tanks there are calls for the banning of Trade Unions altogether using the economic situation as an excuse.

Remember - ordinary working people did not cause this recession – we should not be paying the price by having our rights at work ripped up and having working conditions from 1700 imposed upon us.

Email your MP now! Go here

You can download the full leaked report including the excluded Executive Summary here

To download the published version in order to make a comparison, click here

Source: UnionsTogether