'Companies should be able to fire staff more easily, one of the Coalition’s key advisers said yesterday.Lord Young, who served as Employment Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, said firms were reluctant to create jobs because it was too difficult to get rid of staff.
The peer has been asked by the Prime Minister to come up with a ‘brutally honest’ report on how to overturn the ‘institutional bias’ against small businesses.
But he also favours freeing up firms from the layers of red tape imposed over the past two decades.'
Tell a leftie or leftie politician that this problem is an absolute truth and they will suddenly turn either 'deaf or dismissive'. But it is true.
Employers are terrified of not being able to rid themselves of staff who are: surly, lazy, poor timekeepers, unenthusiastic et al.
They are terrified of industrial tribunals where wrongdoers frequently manage to reverse justice; they fear pregnancy in key employees - and if I dare say this - they can be reluctant to take on workers from ethnic minorities too. This latter issue is because the industrial tribunals are already weighted against you and if you add the fact that you might also be accused of racism as a default defence in such matters .... Such situations do nobody any favours.
I have no idea whether Lord Young is posturing or if he has a genuine belief that something could be done but I can assure him that whilst remaining in the European Union, there is no chance whatsoever of eradicating all these problems caused to employers.
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