Aah, I see. “By Newswire” = “Repost of Labour Party press releases”. Bit clearer now.

Precisely what you’d expect from the Tories, of course – first there are ‘special exemptions’ in the name of ‘growth’ (or ‘enterprise’, or some other loosely-defined concept); then the right to maternity / paternity leave, etc., has lost absolute status and can be further eroded as the principle has been broken.

Having said that, Labour’s record on other issues – particularly the rights of agency / temporary workers and the working time directive etc. – is pretty appalling. I seem to remember Gordon Brown making similar excuses at the time (“it’s the economy, stupid”), so the Tories don’t have a monopoly on shafting workers in recent years.

What grates the most is that the Tories never had the balls to say any of that during the election campaign. It is that which smacks of dishonesty and contempt for ordinary people.

@ 3 claude

I’m not sure which I find most surprising: the fact that you think the Tories would act any differently as a natural consequence of being… you know…Tories, or the fact you thought they’d be likely to tell us what was in store during the election campaign.

Can I interest you in this bridge I have to sell…?

At least Thatcher was upfront about her plans. This lot now are absolutely gutless and spineless, as slimy as an eel.

The problem with Tory ideology, which I’ve repeated time and again, is that their style in government is confrontational and by default. They just seem to be unable to help it: they have to antagonise entire categories of ordinary people. If not single mums, then it’s the unemployed. If not the unemployed then it’s university students. If not university students then it’s pregnant workers; if not pregnant workers then it’s public workers; if not it’s the gays and the lesbians; then it’s pensioners; then it’s the immigrants; then it’s the trade unions, and so on.

This is why the history of Conservative governments is lined with social unrest.

@5

Thatcher wasn’t always up-front about her plans. Most people didn’t know what was coming in 1979 in particular. She was in fact often rather adept at hiding the dry as dust, dogmatic Thatcherism beloved of the right behind more acceptable “wet” persona of some of her enablers on the left of the Tory party. Sadly they were no more capable of controller her than Schleicher and von Papen were of controlling Hitler.

Galen10,
You’re knocking on an open door. I’m hardly going to stand here and defend Britain’s worst government in history (Thatcher’s).
All I said is that Cameron was extremely dishonest as he said nothing during the campaign a fragment of what his party were going to do while in government. I know a lot of people suffer from goldfish memory syndrome, but I hope enough remember this next time they cast their ballot.

Enemies of enterprise = civil servants
Enemies of enterprise = workers
Strategy for growth = blame the workers!

I can’t believe the hypocrisy of this Tory Gvt, but what Is even more disturbing is the Lib Dems standing idly by and allowing it all to happen. Don’t forget right up until Nick Clegg got the intoxicating whiff of power he agreed with Labours strategy for defecit reduction!

We’re doomed I tells ya doomed!!

@claude

Ah, but it’s worse than they thought you see. As Liam Byrne privately joked to David Laws “there is no money left”.

The last Government irresponsibly increased spending to pull us out of recession, leaving growth higher than expected and the budget deficit smaller than forecast (obvious Labour bias of civil service there, under-forecasting growth and over-forecasting the deficit to “help” Brown’s re-election).

Because of this, the Conservatives have been forced to U-turn and privatise everything the state owns, leave the banks alone, cut tax on the rich and businesses and take decisions which I’ve massive benefits for Tory donors. But they didn’t plan on any of this before the election at all. Honest.

Cameron must thank the Lord for giving him Clegg to distract attention from all of his broken promises

This is being pushed both in the UK and the US. It is a deliberate attack on the working class. The Global elite has an unquenchable greed for ever more wealth. This is the new gilded age.

The funny thing is that there are a lot of middle class tories who have no idea what is about to be done to them in the name of free markets and enterprise. The French had the right idea. They knew how to deal with the wealthy elites. Mobilise the guillotine.

Hmm. I reckon 10 employees is too high, but the effect on the business has to be taken into account. If a medium-sized or large enterprise can’t afford to occasionally cover maternity/paternity pay, it’s doing something wrong. But if you run a local business with only two or three employees (a small shop, perhaps), having to either pay for an extra employee or run the business short-handed might be the difference between sinking and swimming. You’ve also got to take into account the effect this sort of thing can have on hiring policies (small businesses are allowed to ignore some rules about hiring based on gender, if I’m right).

On the other hand, it seems a pretty raw deal that you can lose your right to maternity/paternity pay simply because you work for a small firm. I know this approach is rarely as popular as making businesses pay, but maybe the state should support people in these situations?

@11 Chaise

It’s all back to front and upside down this approach ? Make it easy to sack ppl, deny workers rights, do away with the minimum wage etc yet let corporate tax avoidance and bankers do what the hell they like. This lot have fallen through a worm hole in the 80′s only to reappear and pick up where they left off.

I certainly don’t see anything new about these politics !!

“But the government’s plans will cost jobs if firms with 11 or 12 people decide to downsize to take advantage and it will make it harder for mums and dads to go out to work.”

What is annoying is the dishonesty of this quote. Whether or not you support such rights, everyone must recognise that this plan will encourage jobs growth. Small businesses are, rightfully, terrified they will hire someone who will then cost them a fortune by going out on maternity leave. Which is one reason they are so reluctant to hire. Big businesses may be able to afford someone like Natasha Kaplinsky doing that sort of thing, but someone with five employees cannot. So they will not hire. Reducing the costs of hiring will encourage them to hire more.

Now we may well decide to inflict this pain on society in the interests of social justice, but to pretend that it is not painful is absurd.

5. claude – “The problem with Tory ideology, which I’ve repeated time and again, is that their style in government is confrontational and by default. They just seem to be unable to help it: they have to antagonise entire categories of ordinary people. If not single mums, then it’s the unemployed. If not the unemployed then it’s university students. If not university students then it’s pregnant workers; if not pregnant workers then it’s public workers; if not it’s the gays and the lesbians; then it’s pensioners; then it’s the immigrants; then it’s the trade unions, and so on.”

Ordinary people? There is another way to look at this – the problem with Labour ideology is that it is appeasement and vote-buying by default. They seem unable to help it. They have to split the British community into smaller and smaller groups and offer them huge amounts of everyone else’s money. They need those special interests to survive. Look at your examples – a series of special interests paid off by the Left with our money. Of course when the Tories come to power they are going to want to spend our money on their friends and not the friends of the Labour Party. Why would anyone be surprised about that?

“This is why the history of Conservative governments is lined with social unrest.”

And yet the Conservatives are the natural party in power in Britain. Which suggests that Labour’s special interests are more violent than the Tories’, doesn’t it?

“And yet the Conservatives are the natural party in power in Britain”

@14
Says who?
They were unable to win an election after 13 years in opposition, with the most unpopular PM (Gordon Brown) in about 15 centuries, with most of the press backing them and in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 60 years. Natural party in power? Yeah. And Malcolm McClaren was the best England manager ever.

15. claude – “They were unable to win an election after 13 years in opposition, with the most unpopular PM (Gordon Brown) in about 15 centuries, with most of the press backing them and in the midst of the worst economic crisis in 60 years.”

Says the historical record. They should not have been in office for most of the twentieth century, but they were. It is true they did not manage to win an easy election – but then they did not have a conservative candidate. They went with another Liberal-Democrat. The New Labour Party was, in many ways, at least as conservative, if not more so, than Dave. However it may be true that other factors are at work that have changed that natural domination. We will have to see. But the simple, undeniable fact of it is, well, undeniable.

allow small businesses be exempt from offering maternity and paternity leave to employees.

I thought the point of employment legislation was to protect people from being oppressed by big, monopolistic employers.

If it is a small business, it can hardly be oppressing anyone, so why should such legislation apply to it?

Having to either pay for an extra employee or run the business short-handed might be the difference between sinking and swimming.

Let’s assume a small business employs someone on GBP21k a year, and that she takes the full maternity allowance. This would involve a total payout of GBP2180 for the six weeks that are paid out at 90% of wages, and GBP4121 for the 33 weeks that are paid at GBP124.88 per week.

If a sum as small as GBP6302 is the difference between your company sinking and swimming, you really shouldn’t be in business in the first place.

Small businesses are, rightfully, terrified they will hire someone who will then cost them a fortune by going out on maternity leave

If they’re terrified, it’s because they’ve been terrified by right-wing scaremongers.

And even assuming this is a genuine problem rather than an excuse to take away workers’ rights, then the correct solution would be for the government to set up an insurance fund that pools the financial risk, thereby putting small businesses on an equal footing with large ones.

I thought the point of employment legislation was to protect people from being oppressed by big, monopolistic employers.

No, that’s something you just made up.

It’s perfectly possible for someone to be oppressed by an employer even if they’re the *only* employee. Indeed, small businesses are far more likely to have abusive working practices than large companies, because they don’t have legal or HR departments to stop managers from doing whatever the hell they like.

john b/18,19: And of that 6302 pounds, a small business – assuming its class 1 NIC liability is less than 45k, which is likely for a small business – the business will be able to reclaim from the government 6586 of it (104.5%). Above 45k NIC1, it would only be able to reclaim around 5800 of it (92%), but that’s not likely for a really small business.

Usually this is “reclaimed” simply by not sending the same amount of income tax payments to the government – so the business “gets” the money instantly, but there is provision for getting advance funding if the business isn’t sending that much income tax in the first place.

No small business should be having any cashflow or balance problems as a result of providing maternity/paternity leave. There is no financial risk involved whatsoever.

This is a more generous arrangement than the recovery arrangement in place for Statutory Sick Pay, where businesses are expected to pick up an amount equal to 13% of their NIC1 liability themselves, and only able to claim back the excess. Furthermore, employees can become seriously ill with far less warning than they are likely to become a parent, and for an unknown length of time, making hiring a temporary replacement for them generally impractical. SSP (and employees being ill) is a far greater risk and liability to employers. Complaints about SSP are far less loudly stated, though. (Not, for the avoidance of doubt, that I’m suggesting SSP should be cut instead!)

cim – Thanks for that – I hadn’t realised the terms for reclaiming statutory maternity pay were so generous. In which case, small businesses have *absolutely no* excuse.

I’m guessing the reason maternity pay gets discussed more than sick pay is that even the dimmest right-wing pundits are aware that they personally might get sick, whereas maternity pay is only directly a problem for women of reproductive age (and their partners, but presumably the dimmest right-wing pundits are either scandalised by the concept of their wife working in the first place, or unlikely ever to find a female willing to reproduce with them).

John b,

spot on.

The Tories’ wet dream: thousands of workers working behind razor wire, search lights and watch towers, making sports clothes for overseas markets.

@ 21 cim

“And of that 6302 pounds, a small business – assuming its class 1 NIC liability is less than 45k, which is likely for a small business – the business will be able to reclaim from the government 6586 of it (104.5%). Above 45k NIC1, it would only be able to reclaim around 5800 of it (92%), but that’s not likely for a really small business.”

Oh, ok. So this isn’t about protecting small businesses, it’s about the government wanting to save money on maternity pay, and doing so by deciding to exclude a group that is effectively chosen arbitrarily. In that case you guys are absolutely right to criticise it.

If companies can get more than 90% of their SMP payments back, why such a debacle over maternity pay in general?

The reclamation terms very rarely get discussed. I’m fairly sure half of the “unfair burden on business” commentators aren’t even aware of them.

Hmm. If there’s to be no statutory pay requirement for small businesses, would that mean that there’d be no reclamation possible either? (since only the statutory portion gets repaid, not any more generous local deals) That would be an incentive not to offer paid maternity leave, as a small business, if you suddenly have to pay for it yourself. (And also quietly take a fair amount off government expenditure) That would be really nasty, and – far from helping small businesses – would directly punish them for trying to do the right thing.

It also makes no real sense: excluding small businesses from maternity pay obligations is controversial but understandable if the business has to pay its own way, but if the government is reimbursing the maternity pay for everyone else, it’s like “we’ve decided that anyone with fewer than nine collegues isn’t entitled to the same rights as other people for no reason whatsoever”.

Some time ago, I heard someone on the radio justify this in terms of it was difficult for an employer to plan a response to maternity leave.
But what utter rubbish as there is several months’ warning.

Also, maternity leave can give the unemployed a chance to maintain their skills.
Clearly, a good thing.

Seeing as this debate has focused on maternity leave and forgot the plethora of other means by which to dismiss someone an employer might take a dislike to under any new laws it would be a gigantic setback for women in work, no matter where they work. If an employers first concern was how to deny some maternity rights then they would simply not employ women in the first place. Yet another unforeseen nee inconsidered consequence ergo denying millions of families the opportunity to get out of the poverty trap!

Yet more Tory led Lib Dem supported ideology.

There will always be rational arguments about why workers’ rights should be taken away, when one is taken-away it is so much easier for others to follow. And even if Labour get back in at the next election, I doubt very much if they will be re-instated. Most workers’ rights were won by strong unions.

@30 steveb

When was the last time a union went on strike for extra employment protection? I think you will find that the previous labour govmt introduced and combined into one equality act a whole raft of discrimination protection for employees without any industrial discord. But why would a Gvnmt introduce such legislation? Do u think maybe because the courts are littered with claims for unfair treatment by unscrupulous employers? If employers were fair spirited people who treated employees properly there would be no need for employment tribunals! I’m certainly not defending all workers but if small firms cannot manage staff appropriately they shouldn’t rely on the Gvnmt to make it easy for them.

@ the natural party of govt?? well ok lets not bother to vote then..since they have the divine right to rule over us serfs…..but thats the thing isnt’t it..we do vote dont we and not all of us for for the ‘natural party’ ie the party of sleaze, backhanders, sell offs, railways disasters, the ongoing struggle to sell of the NHS..social divide, factory closures, unemployment…sounds more like natural disaster !!!

i dont get this natural party of govt schtick…a govt that deliberately sacks people, robs people of rights, make people homeless, and is hell bent on wrecking our health care system? that sounds like the natural gun i would use to blow my brains out…stupid…

@ 32 33

Chill out. It just means that the Tories tend to win elections.

31
I’m not clear about your argument other than labour introduced certain rights without union pressure. But my argument was about any future labour government operating in less favourable economic times.
Btw, the last government introduced tax credits. a strong union would have pushed for a higher miniumum wage, not fostering the extra pay on to the taxpayer.