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Sorry mate, I can’t afford to risk giving you a job

The BBC reports that the Labour Party now says, “Give workers full rights from day one.”

Workers should be given “full” employment rights from day one, Labour has said as it announces plans to “fundamentally change the economy”.

Currently some rights – such as being able to request flexible working – only kick in at a later stage.

This would fundamentally change the economy all right. No more probationary periods. No more casual employment of the sort which survey after survey shows most casual employees value for the freedom it gives them. In Labour’s brave new world if you employ someone for one day, you will be stuck with them. In that case, you had better be very sure before you take anyone on. An end, then, to giving someone outside the usual pool of recruits a chance to prove themselves. The safe course for employers will be to avoid hiring women (who might clock in on day one and clock off for paid maternity leave on day two), to avoid hiring young people (who have not had a chance to establish a record of steadiness), to avoid hiring anyone with the slightest blemish on their record, or whose class or race might make them statistically risky, and to stick with employing people who they can size up on little evidence, which again usually means their own ethnic group. There is no need to assume actual racism or class hatred, just the universal human tendency to behave defensively when the cost of making a mistake is very high.

Will Labour also get rid of cooling off periods for people who make major purchases?

Or how about applying the same rules to sex? We know that a set of laws that forbid the very existence of casual sexual relationships can be stable: that was the system enforced for centuries in the West and still is in many parts of the world now. Hence the the saying “marry in haste, repent at leisure”. The aim of those rules is to force all sexual relationships to be permanent, or at the very least difficult to dissolve. They generally succeed in that aim, although there are unintended consequences. While I am all for voluntary fidelity in marriage, legal enforcement of a “marriage or nothing” system results in many more incels, old maids, and people stuck in destructive marriages. I see no reason why rules to discourage casual employment should not work in a similar manner to rules which discourage casual sex. Is that what the Labour party wants?

23 comments to Sorry mate, I can’t afford to risk giving you a job

  • This has worked so well in France /sarc

    You want to know why French people under the age of 30 have multiple 6 month stages (internships) and no permanent jobs? Having a law just like this proposed one is why.

  • Also per Guido, the Labour party are engaging in exactly the sort of “Fire and rehire” thing they object to others doing.

    https://order-order.com/2021/07/26/labour-using-fire-rehire-tactics-to-stabilise-finances/

    Typical “laws are for others” hypocites

  • George Atkisson

    Ah, the Progressive worldview. Collectivist at its core. All people are declared to be equal in every way and the new unproven employee must have the same benefits and rewards as the 20 year veteran employee. It’s only fair, right? Anything else is proof of discrimination and (gasp!) OPPRESSION! See Critical Race Theory. That square peg will be driven into every hole, if it takes a 10 ton press. The result will be catastrophic destruction, but that’s okay because that proves that The System was fatally flawed from the beginning or it would have worked. Stupid Patriarchal White Supremacist Western Civilization has failed once more and must be eradicated to bring true Equality of Outcome!

    The above is now being taught from preschool through University and is seen by far too many as right and proper, with little to no pushback. When the Real World doesn’t operate this way, well, riots, demonstrations, safe spaces, and cancel culture are the obvious response. Just build your own world and demand that it replace that stupid Real World that makes them feel inadequate.

  • bobby bb

    I can remember in Minneapolis, way back in time, when the Urban League (the black-advocate org of that time) was pushing for standard “probationary period” hiring, because it let employers hire more unknown quantities – which roughly translated into “young black workers” – without being stuck if the employees were a bad fit. The theory was probationary hiring would let more “marginalized” people into the workforce.

    How far we’ve come.

  • Fraser Orr

    Just on a side note, we are just coming out of a period when massive numbers of people did their work, quite successfully, from home. Home might well be in India or Costa Rica, where you don’t have to put up with such ridiculous employment regulations, and can get the same work at a quarter of the price. In my business, software production, it is getting harder and harder to justify employing Americans. I can’t even imagine how much worse that calculation is in Britain.

  • Agammamon

    None of these things are actually rights though.

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray

    How do we refashion the Olympics so as to enforce Equality of Outcomes? In races, should everybody hold hands, and try to run at the speed of the slowest contestant? While still trying to have the highest score (or else they’d all sit down and chat!)? Everybody wins! Gold medals for all!

  • John Lewis

    Not quite Golds for all but many already have and will be won against rather small fields.

    So far we have seen numerous taekwondo and boxing events with just 16 competitors. Swimming relays with just 8 teams (same as the men’s diving won by Daley and Lee) while in rowing all 7 entries in the men’s and women’s eights predictably qualified for either the final or the repecharge.

  • John B

    France: chronic employment 25% in the 16 – 30 age group thanks to once hired can never be fired legislation. General unemployment is chronic 10%. This pre-CoVid

    Together with 35 hour week and other labour regulation, companies do not have enough workers to produce timely supplies, keep supermarket shelves stacked, long waiting times to get anything done.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    As an employer myself I shudder when I recall what would have happened in a few cases where I hired someone on a probationary period and they turned out not to meet requirements of the job. In the cases it wasn’t a disciplinary issue but a competence one. Their CVs looked impressive, but as I suspect many firms now discover, the inflation of standards in higher ed. carries its dangers.

    While this is the Labour Party, and easy to dismiss because its members tend to be morons, don’t for the moment think that the Tories could not fall for the same sort of nonsense, particularly under the current administration.

  • … in Minneapolis, way back in time, … the Urban League (the black-advocate org of that time) was pushing for standard “probationary period” hiring, because it let employers hire more unknown quantities – which roughly translated into “young black workers” (bobby bb, July 27, 2021 at 12:04 am)

    How common-sensible of them. How “way back in time” of them.

    Where has common sense all gone?
    Long time passing.
    Where’s the will to speak it gone?
    Long time ago.
    Where have those who had it gone?
    Cancel-cultured every one.

    When will the woke relearn
    What they chose to unlearn?

  • The Pedant-General

    ” Is that what the Labour party wants?”

    Obviously yes. Because that will then result in industrial disputes which fires up their (old) base – they get their class war.

  • Plamus

    The safe course for employers will be to avoid hiring women (who might clock in on day one and clock off for paid maternity leave on day two), to avoid hiring young people (who have not had a chance to establish a record of steadiness), to avoid hiring anyone with the slightest blemish on their record, or whose class or race might make them statistically risky, and to stick with employing people who they can size up on little evidence, which again usually means their own ethnic group.

    While I am not very familiar with the nuances of British politics (and a cursory search finds little), it seems to me that the Tories are (still) the party of the middle class, while Labour’s primary constituents are young people (in particular young women) and Muslim South Asians. I would guess that holds for people “with the slightest blemish on their record”. Thus the policy’s noxious side effects are a feature, not a bug. The more people Labour keeps from moving up into the middle class, the better for them.

  • Mr Ecks

    Highly unlikely that ZaNu UK will get the chance to implement this cockrot. Biggest danger as Johnathon Pearce says above is that Bogus Johnson and his gang may pick the idea up as new and trendy.

  • Stonyground

    Along with the famous ‘running out of other people’s money’ it seems to be a feature of the left not to think through the likely consequences of their ideas. Whatever it is, everyone but them can see that it’s a terrible idea and how it’s going to turn out.

  • staghounds

    How is it that employees are protected from discharge by their employers, yet unqualified members of the public can effectively discharge an entire staff by shopping elsewhere? Even for racist, sexist, or trans phobic reasons?

    This is so inequitable!

  • Zerren Yeoville

    If enacted, measures such as this latest piece of Labour lunacy will only have the effect of accelerating the trend of economic activity away from the long-established employer-employee model, as predicted by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg in their mid-1990s volume, ‘The Sovereign Individual’ – i.e. that the go-to model of the future would be of the ad-hoc assembly of self-employed specialists for the minimum time necessary in order to accomplish a specific task, rather than any kind of long-term organisation like a corporation with a permanent staff. (They pointed out that this was already the default mode of movie production, for example, where a ‘temporary corporation’ is assembled for a few months to make a film, and disbanded afterwards.)

    They reminded their readers that ‘job’ was, in the past, a word usually applied to a single specific task, rather than a permanent position of employment. The usage survives today in such terms as ‘jobbing builder.’

    Why would an entrepreneur form a company and take on permanent staff, when they could achieve their goals as a ‘sole trader’ with a combination of short-term self-employed or employment-agency ‘temps’ and outsourced ‘online assistants’ who may be continents away? But if the policymakers are more likely to be reading Thomas ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ Piketty than Tim ‘Four Hour Work Week’ Ferriss, they are unlikely to be aware of the ‘unintended consequences’ of their pipe-dream policies.

  • Albion's Blue Front Door

    It must be fun at Labour ‘think’ sessions as they scratch round desperately for the next ‘new idea’ for a future manifesto. Their fear must be one day they will run out of these exciting new ideas and be forced to resort to that tired old tactic of giving the public what will benefit them.

  • Jim

    “The safe course for employers will be to avoid hiring women (who might clock in on day one and clock off for paid maternity leave on day two)”

    That is the case now, that women can walk out on SML the day after starting work. A friend of mine employed a young girl (teenage) in her restaurant on an apprenticeship, after a few months she suddenly declared she was pregnant and disappeared. My friend had to keep her post open for ages, and find someone else to cover her hours in the meantime. Not sure if she’d worked long enough to qualify for SMP as well, but even if she hadn’t she’d still get maternity benefits from the State.

    https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave/eligibility

  • Rudolph Hucker

    I see @FrancisT has already mentioned it, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to put the quotes side-by-side, so people can see how breathtakingly blatant the hypocrisy is:

    May 2021

    Labour and TUC call for ‘fire and rehire’ ban as part of new work vision.
    Labour’s deputy leader cited the example of fire and rehire, under which staff are forced to accept worse conditions in order to keep their jobs, as one area where ministers must do more, calling it an “appalling and bullying practice”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/17/labour-and-tuc-call-for-ban-on-fire-and-rehire-as-part-of-new-vision-of-work

    July 2021

    Workers should be given “full” employment rights from day one, Labour has said as it announces plans to “fundamentally change the economy”. Currently some rights – such as being able to request flexible working – only kick in at a later stage. Labour is also calling for a ban on “fire and re-hire” practices.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57962405

    Labour is quietly recruiting staff on insecure temporary contracts with worse employment conditions while it moves to make a third of its existing permanent employees redundant, The Independent can reveal. The party is being accused of using underhand “fire and rehire” practices condemned by Keir Starmer himself in a speech just a few months ago.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-fire-and-rehire-keir-starmer-david-evans-b1889879.html

  • Fraser Orr

    @Zerren Yeoville
    that the go-to model of the future would be of the ad-hoc assembly of self-employed specialists for the minimum time necessary in order to accomplish a specific task

    This, I think, is a subject greatly discussed among economists, what is the difference between a firm structured round employment and a network of contracted independents. The general consensus is “transaction costs”. For example, if you have a factory and need a bunch of people to put things together, then you could keep them on only when you have orders, but the cost of a constantly changing staff (and an idle factory) has considerable transaction costs, as anyone who has ever hired someone knows.

    But of course “transaction costs” is exactly what the piling on of more and more employment regulation causes. And so that benefit of employment (namely the reduction in high turnover transaction costs) is squeezed out by adding employment related transaction costs.

    The other burden though is regulatory — where the government makes it harder and harder to use independent contractors, and rather to force them to be treated as employees (as has happened in the UK with changes in the tax law that I forget for now, and as is happening to large networks of independent contractors like Uber.) But, as an employer, the solution is simple — get rid of the restrictions by outsourcing to a different less burdensome regulatory environment. I’d simply ask this: what possible reason would I have to hire Americans? They are much more expensive, have massive regulatory and civil liability risks and have the worst possible tax treatment of all people on both sides. Evidence of the past year has shown that most jobs can be done from anywhere, so if I am a CEO reporting to a board of investors, what possible justification can I give them for spending their money on any American whose job I can offshore? I mean, to me, to not do so is verging on a breach of fiduciary duty.

    It is the hubris of the middle manager who gets his Napoleon complex satisfied by seeing little worker bees buzzing away in his factory, rather than free, sovereign individuals exchanging valuable work for payment.

    FWIW, if I were in charge of Uber what I’d do is require every driver to start a little LLC in a cheap state like Wyoming, then set up my business overseas in several entities in different countries and contract between them and all these little driver companies. I’d set up a separate software service they paid, say, $5 a month for that did all the paperwork for them. Such a treatment would be very difficult for the IRS and the State government busybodies to break down, and would give the drivers the freedom they seek. Tax agencies love employment and hate independent contractors because employees get the worst tax treatment of anyone in the country. And governments in general don’t like lots of little companies since they are so much harder to control, like herding cats.

  • Rudolph Hucker

    @Fraser Orr

    “Herding cats” hits the nail on the head.

    where the government makes it harder and harder to use independent contractors, and rather to force them to be treated as employees (as has happened in the UK with changes in the tax law that I forget for now

    That was IR35. Initially aimed at software developers, but now creeping everywhere from BBC Celebrities to Locum Doctors.

    HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) really doesn’t want the petty pain of dealing with thousands of petty little businesses, even if they do pay tax. Far easier to deal with a much smaller number of multinational corporations that, err, don’t pay tax.

  • Paul Marks

    There are two possibilities here.

    Either these political types really do not know that all this stuff mandated by the government, pushes up UNEMPLOYMENT. Or they do know – and they do not care.

    If they really do not know – then patient teaching of basic economic principles (how a labour market works and why pushing higher wages and better conditions via REGULATIONS, rather than improving productivity over time, leads to higher unemployment) is needed. However, I suspect that the latter alternative is true – i.e. that the people who push these government interventions know it leads to higher unemployment, and do not care.