British Chambers of Commerce call for freeze on minimum wage
March 9, 2009
The British Chambers of Commerce have called for the national minimum wage to be frozen in 2009. The group made the call to try and bring about economic stability and have seen this as part of a recovery plan.
The current minimum wage is £5.73 per hour but this is due to be reviewed in October by the Low Pay Commission.
The report states:
“When the economy grows, inflationary NMW increases can and should be absorbed by businesses. Freezing the NMW in 2009 would offer genuine help to businesses and support employment, with the added benefit of being a minimal cost to the government.”
The Director General from the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost has spoken out and explained that the government needs to do it all it can to help assist businesses through the tough times of the downturn.
David has said:
“Collectively, we need to be looking at what sort of economy we want to see in the future, and, importantly, what action will need to be taken to get us there. This recovery plan should act to foster growth in the short term and lay the foundations for economic stability in the long term.”
Do you agree that a freeze should be put on the minimum wage in order for businesses to keep more money to create new jobs and wealth? Let me know your opinion on this matter.
Decision reached by ECJ in Heyday/mandatory retirement case
March 6, 2009
Last month I wrote about the case of Heyday and the mandatory retirement age (9th Feb), which is a dispute that has been ongoing for a long time. Heyday, which is part of age charity Age Concern, brought a case to the High Court arguing that the mandatory retirement age of 65 in the UK, and the fact that employers can lawfully dismiss an employee for this reason, is against the Age Discrimination Regulations; which is derived from the EU Equal Treatment Directive. The High Court referred this question to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which has now delivered its decision.
The decision supports that of the Advocate-General’s decision in November last year (which is usually the case in ECJ rulings), stating that:
“the age limit was legal if it was directed towards fulfilling a legitimate aim in employment or social policy”
This means that, for the time being at least, the mandatory retirement age of 65 will remain, and employers can continue to use retirement as a lawful reason for dismissal as long as they follow the statutory retirement procedures in doing so.
The decision has been unpopular with a number of organisations, including the CIPD which feels that the UK is acting unfairly and also losing out on a lot of potential talent by automatically assuming people should not work after 65.
This is a really big decision in current employment law terms; as it still means that the Age Discrimination Regulations, which were introduced in 2006, are slightly contradictory in their application. Of course, the decision to keep the mandatory retirement age will make things easier for employers needing to cut down on the workforce in difficult financial circumstances, and I wonder if a different decision might have been reached if the economic climate had been different at the time of the ECJ ruling? What do you think?
25 years after the miners’ strike (2)
March 4, 2009
… continued from yesterday’s post 25 years after the miners’ strike (1)
We often see footage from the time of violent clashes between strikers and the police, or depictions of this in TV programmes and Film. This violence was initially between the workers picketing at pits and local police forces, such as the clash at Orgreave in South Yorkshire in June 1984, where 5,000 miners intending to stop lorries carrying coke leaving the site (they did not succeed), met 5,000 police officers carrying batons and riot shields. Later on in the year-long strike there were clashes on the picket line when miners started to return to work at the end of 1984 because of the hardship caused by not earning a wage for months on end. Soup kitchens were opened to help many families who could not afford to feed themselves, and food donations became commonplace.
In March 1985 the strike finally ended as the NUM gave in and voted to call it off, and history was made:
“From 1985 onwards the pit closure programme picked up speed. Margaret Thatcher had taken on the strongest union in the land and won” (BBC)
These days Trade Unionism has a very different face, with many of the traditionally unionised industries in decline, and the majority of union members are now in the public sector. Whilst we have seen quite a lot of industrial action in the last year or so, gone are the days of flying pickets, although we did recently see ‘sympathetic’ industrial action with a number of oil refineries staging unofficial strikes in support of the Lindsey Refinery’s foreign worker dispute; although this support action (i.e. not directly related to the workplace where it takes place) is not lawful under current legislation.
25 years after the miners’ strike (1)
March 3, 2009
There’s a lot in the media at the moment about the 25 year anniversary of one of the most memorable events in the history of industrial action in the UK. The national miners’ strike began in March 1984 and lasted for a whole year. The strike started after the Government announced plans to close around 20 pits across the country, because they were no longer considered economical. This would see the loss of 20,000 miners’ jobs. The first pit to see a walkout was Cortonwood near Barnsley, followed by many more and by the middle of March half the 187,000 miners in the country had joined the strike.
The miners strike turned into a bitter battle between Margaret Thatcher’s Government, which was changing the economic outlook of the country and taking a more hands-off approach to industry, and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), led by the infamous Arthur Scargill; described as:
a ‘fiery Marxist Yorskshireman’
The aim of the miners’ strike was to bring the country’s energy supply to a standstill in order to gain bargaining power with the Government, but this could not happen as anticipated because Thatcher had ensured large stocks of coal were kept aside at sites across the country before the strike took place.
This was in the years before the 1992 legislation on lawful industrial action: the Trade Union and Labour Relations (consolidation) Act, and there were different rules relating to industrial action which meant that ‘flying pickets’ were sent all over the country to different collieries, to persuade miners to not go to work. Another key factor in the events was that a ballot had been taken in 1981 in Yorkshire, where NUM members voted to walk out in support of any pit that was threatened with closure. This meant that when the strikes started in 1984, the NUM could argue that the decision for national walkouts in support of the mines under threat of closure had already been balloted.
… continues tomorrow.
Interim specialists – providing help for businesses affected by the recession
February 26, 2009
The big ‘R’ word – you can hardly go half a day at the moment without hearing something related to the economic downturn, whether it’s interest rates cuts, mass redundancies or businesses going under. Thousands of companies in the UK, both small and large, are really starting to struggle in the face of economic uncertainty and loss of business; and in turn this is leading to an increase in the need for interim specialists to carry out short term ‘turnaround’ projects to provide help for businesses affected by the recession.
Interim specialists can provide the value needed at a variety of levels in the company; from boardroom to backroom. This is not to say that existing staff are not capable of managing the company as the country is going through a recession, but that there may be certain specialist skills and experience required that may not be abundant within the organisation. Another factor is that existing staff have all the issues that still occur each day to deal with – and an interim has the benefit of not being part of the workforce and therefore the day to day activities. They can therefore take a step back and really focus on what is needed without any preconceptions, or indeed without any emotional connection to the company – which may hinder the difficult decision making process companies often have to go through in a recession.
According to a recent article I read, interim managers are in high demand at the moment but are in short supply due to the abundance of companies using their services to help them deal with the recession. It seems that interims can pick and choose their assignments, and will almost certainly choose the ones that will have the biggest impact on their portfolio, as well as those in which they feel they can truly make an impact (and not be hindered by company politics or individual agendas). Many companies advertise for interim turnaround managers in the national or specific press, and there are also a lot of recruitment consultants that specialise in interims. Often a good way to source the perfect interim is through networking – many senior managers know specialists or their counterparts in other organisations, or have met the right kind of people at events or conferences.
How far does the minimum wage stretch?
February 23, 2009
I’ve just read an article about an experiment a reporter is carrying out for the traditional period of self-denial; Lent. Charlotte McDonald, who is based in London, is going to live on the current minimum wage for the 40 days of the festival – to see how far £5.73 an hour gets you when you live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Charlotte has calculated that after paying all her bills, rent and travel expenses (which is notoriously very expensive in London) she will have less than £15 each week for food and socialising (which I don’t think she will be able to do much of). Do you think that you could live on that much money?
The experiment is taking a look at how people have to live when times are hard;
‘As the recession has started to change people’s spending habits, I don’t think I will be alone in trying to find enterprising ways of economising.’
One person has left a comment below the article on Charlotte’s experiment, saying that she could perhaps be entitled to some benefits depending on her earnings, but I’m not so sure – if she works full time and earns the minimum wage then I don’t see what support she would be entitled to – can anyone shed any light on this?
This will be a very interesting experiment and I will be keeping up with Charlotte’s progress by looking on the news shopper website.
What’s a good industry to be in?
February 18, 2009
Whilst the media at the moment is generally full of depressing news about job cuts all over the country due to the economic downturn, there have been occasional refreshing reports about jobs being created in a number of different industries. So what are the recession-resistors and recession-risks in terms of the jobs people actually carry out?
Well at the bad end of the scale, finance, manufacturing and retail seem to have taken a huge hit, which largely began with the huge city losses last year when large multinational banks went under and many other financiers suffered massively. There have been huge job losses on the high street, with Woolworths, USC and Zavvi (who today announced that the remaining stores will be gone by the end of this week) amongst the list of retail casualties. Mini (part of BMW) has become the latest in a series of large scale redundancies in the car manufacturing sector this week when hundreds of jobs were shed at the plant in Cowley. Today General Motors has announced that 47,000 jobs will go across the world, which may affect the Vauxhall plant in Merseyside. So which industries appear to be resisting the economic climate?
Companies operating in the digital arena may have a better chance than the above industries, with so much of everyday life moving online; and this may be partly why Woolworths and Zavvi have left the high street – as so many of their products can now be bought much cheaper online from companies such as Amazon and Play. There’s also a focus on digital industries in the ‘new deal’ philosophy that Barack Obama and Gordon Brown spoke of at the beginning of the year: with broadband connections for everyone being a key feature. Another one is in the environmental field – which still has importance despite the economic climate having perhaps stolen all the headlines recently.
The supermarkets appear to be leading the way in creating new jobs, with ASDA last month announcing 7,000 new jobs that will be created through expansion, as well as similar announcements from Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s and Tesco. In these times supermarkets are able to thrive with money saving deals and price drops, as well as targeted advertising such as the ‘feed a family for less than a fiver’, and ‘every little helps’ campaigns. I imagine that many general stores that will struggle will be local shops such as independent butchers and greengrocers etc; who will not be able to compete in terms of price comparison.
Then there are stories of growth and development that are more unusual – like the £225million development of Chester Zoo that will be taking place until 2018. This will see the Zoo grow substantially and introduce a vast array of exciting new attractions and species, and will also provide hundreds of jobs over the coming years in the North West of England in conservation/zoology (as well as construction and engineering during the development).
So it seems that whilst the economy appears to be sliding further each day, and there are many people in difficult positions, there are industries that are actually not doing too badly. I would think that in the next year or so, many keen entrepreneurs will be looking to analyse the effects of the recession on different industries and looking to capitalise on some of the opportunities that present themselves.
British jobs for British workers: is ‘protectionism’ valid?
February 5, 2009
You’d have to have been living in a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere to have not heard this week’s big news story. This is about the widespread industrial action that has taken place in a row over Italian workers being imported to work on a contracted job at a Total oil refinery in Lincolnshire.
The dispute occurred because a contract at the Lindsey Oil Refinery was awarded to IREM; an Italian Company, who gained an agreement that they could bring in their own workers from Italy and Portugal to carry out the work. British workers and their unions were dissatisfied with this because they feel that British workers are being denied work; as many jobs like this are being given to foreign workers instead. Of course, the recession has exacerbated this debate because so many jobs are being lost or are at risk, so it is angering some people even more to see foreign workers taking jobs that could potentially be carried out by British workers. Once workers had staged a protest at Lindsey, thousands of workers at other sites across the country carried out their own unofficial industrial action in sympathy.
The dispute has been settled to an extent, with strikers having voted today to return to work on Monday after a deal was struck in which an additional 102 jobs will be created for British workers on the contract, without sacrificing any of the jobs that will be given to the Italian and Portuguese workers. However it is likely that the general dispute about these sorts of actions will continue for a long time, especially as job security and financial stability continue to cause concerns for UK workers during the recession. Even union officials have been saying “the fight does not stop here” and there is now more strike action taking place at Staythorpe power station in Nottinghamshire over lack of work.
This is a very strange and interesting debate. On the one hand it is easy to see why people in one country who are worried about their jobs would feel aggrieved to see people from another country effectively ‘stealing’ their opportunity to work; and therefore ‘protectionism’ appears to be a legitimate course of action. On the other hand, we are part of the European Union, and this means that anyone from the EU has a right to work anywhere within it. The unions are trying to argue that giving British companies the opportunity to make agreements with contractors in which they can bring in their own employees is direct discrimination against British workers. If this argument succeeds, then could we see new legislation dictating the way contracts are agreed with foreign contractors in future?
This sounds like an argument that could stretch into other realms of ‘who should be allowed to work (stroke, be) where?’ and it’s a little unsettling for me. What happens when ‘British jobs’ are kept for ‘British people’ and then it turns out that the people that get them are immigrant workers from foreign countries? Will the workers and unions feel that the right person has got the job in the end? John Philpott, Chief Economist for the CIPD, describes:
‘the worrying undercurrent of xenophobia evident in the current rash of unofficial strikes’
and this effectively describes the way that I feel about this situation. What is your opinion on the events that have taken place and the implications for the future of foreign contracts?
Should women ‘dress for success’?
February 4, 2009
Despite more and more gloomy economical news each day with thousands of redundancies, failing companies, strike action and house repossessions, a really surprising news story yesterday was that the Bank of England has held a seminar for female staff on what makeup, clothes, accessories and perfume to wear in the workplace. Apart from the obvious question of ‘haven’t they got more important things to worry about at the moment?’ the bank has come under fire from both the press and equal opportunities professionals for what has been described as ‘institutional sexism’, and could possibly face discrimination claims as a result.
I actually can’t believe that the bank went ahead with such a ridiculous event at a time like this! What’s more surprising is some of the outrageous statements made in the seminar, that have been leaked in a memo from the meeting, such as:
“be careful with perfume; always wear a heel of some sort – maximum two inches; always wear some sort of makeup, even if it’s just lipstick,”
“No-nos include ankle chains – “professional, but not the one you want to be associated with”
Now, I have in the past sent memos and emails about appropriate dress to staff, mainly in relation to dress down day as it is more difficult for employees to assess what is professional when they are given the freedom to wear their own clothes instead of say, a suit. However, the idea of implying that an employee might look like a prostitute is going a bit over the top in my opinion!
Equal opportunities specialists have said that the seminar and memo indicates that the Bank of England is an ‘institutionally sexist environment’ because they are obviously being judged by what they wear and are therefore being treated differently to men. Perhaps then, a better option would have been to have an open seminar that advised all staff – women and men, on professional dress and how to portray the required image in the workplace…
I saw a mini debate on this subject on the BBC Breakfast show yesterday, and there was a woman in the debate that felt very strongly that people should be judged on the quality of their performance rather than their image. On the other hand, an image consultant argued that appearances are judged, and even went as far as saying that you might have a better chance of saving your job in a redundancy selection situation with the right sort of dress. I agree that image is important to a certain extent, but I do not believe that there’s anyone who could dress their way out of losing their job if they were not good enough. In these difficult times, when companies are making redundancies they will be thinking about the core skills and needs that will help that business to survive and thrive, not who looks the most striking or professional – unless your company actually sells or deals in image (like an escort agency or something…)
One comment that made me chuckle in the whole debate was from Ruth Lea, who is an economic advisor to the Arbuthnot Banking Group, who said:
“Surely it is up to men and women, and their peers at work to decide for themselves what is suitable to wear. If you can get a well-paid job, surely you have the nous to choose the right clothes”
Which I think says it all!
What do you think about this subject? Is dress important and should the Bank of England have gone ahead with the seminar?
Heavy snowfall affects UK businesses
February 2, 2009
Today has seen the heaviest snowfall in 18 years across the South East of England, and many other areas have also been affected by the severe weather. This has caused major delays to many road and rail networks, meaning a lot of workers could not get to work this morning. The first I heard about this is when a friend of mine who lives in London called me first thing this morning to gleefully announce that she was heading back to bed after not being able to get to work on the tube, bus or train! London is said to be the worst affected for travelling as this is where the transport network is most concentrated. Tonight the weather is due to turn very icy, with some areas reaching lows of minus 7 degrees, so it looks like there will be further travel chaos for commuters tomorrow. Commuters are warned to take extreme care when driving as not all roads have been gritted properly and so car tyres may not grip the roads. I’ve actually seen a few minor road accidents in the last few weeks caused by icy driving conditions.
Whilst I wasn’t affected too badly by the snow, I did have to stay at home today due to unforeseen carer leave. However this wasn’t a problem for me because I have a laptop and have recently gained home access to the work computer network and my emails, via a virtual private network (vpn). I’ve actually managed to have a very productive day at home! However this isn’t the norm where I work, and the issues with the weather today have made me realise that we don’t have suitable contingencies for when staff cannot get to work or have to go home early (as we had today)to avoid impending bad weather.
Flexible working options such as home working are seen as a great benefit to employees and are often part of employers’ recruitment and retention strategies, but what’s happened today shows that good facilities for home working can also be a great help to companies when alternatives to employees being in work are needed. Many businesses today will have suffered from a massive amount of down time with employees not being able to get to work, such as the company where my friend in London works. Flexible working plans can help to ensure no loss of productivity when circumstances impede normal working situations.
Let me know if your company has been affected by the weather, and what measures (or lack of them) were in place to cope with the loss of working time.