Pitch up, f*ck up, claim unfair dismissal. There are still loonies in Labour. The loonies that gave us, for example, Red Rebbo. Labour is as screwed up as the Tories.
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Are you saying they are right or wrong to ditch the manifesto commitment?
I donāt really care about the manifesto Tim. I think it was all pie in the sky, āweād say anything to anybody to get electedā stuff, thatās Starmerās style. They hadnāt a clue what they were talking about and they are now contorting themselves to āadhereā to promises made in a vacuum. They didnāt realise the Tories were so hated they didnāt need to say anything to get a landslide.
But that aside 
What Iām wittering on about is the idea that anybody should have the right to claim for unfair dismissal from day one. In other words that the idea of a ātrial periodā is done away with. You wonāt find anybody stronger on workersā rights that me, Iām all against zero hours, worker exploitation etc., but what a disincentive to hire that would be. You meet somebody for a short time, you hire them and within days they turn out to be a disaster and you let the, go. But nevertheless you end up in with an unfair dismissal claim 
Madness.
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Well, to be fair, thatās what all politicians & parties do at election time.
As someone who would be considered a communist by many I too find that proposal to be a step too far.
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Ditto Lord @Badger - it was a silly thing to put in the manifesto. Might have seemed fair at the time but too open to abuse - any new employee may seem OK but can turn out to have faked their job history or just be unsuitable for whatever reason - businesses need to be able to fire people if they donāt fit the spec within an initial period - six months sounds fair to me.
Same with the manifesto pledge not to raise income tax - that was a daft hostage to fortune - now reeves is having to do it by stealth by not raising tax thresholds. It would have been better to raise tax thresholds in line with inflation and slap on an extra percentage point to the rate. IMHO, though I am not an economist of course!
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I think the one per cent is a psychological barrier to pundits and quite a lot of taxpayers, sadly.
Iāve probably said it before but I think they had an opportunity to cancel the NI reduction that Hunt brought in to trap Labour. They could have just said it didnāt make financial sense and most people hadnāt seen the rise in their income for very long, so might have got over it fairly quickly.
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It is the old truism that if youāre not a socialist in your 20s then you have no heart,
but if youāre still a socialist in your 30s then you have no brain. 
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You have an interview and everything seems OK, you start and think youāll really like the job then the manager takes a dislike to your long hair/tats/the fact that you are gay and sacks you - but tough, youāve only been there a week so thereās sod all you can do about it.
There are two sides to most issues.
Getting sacked for no reason having just started a job is a) bad for the finances as youāll probably have been living off reserves and now have to start looking again, and b) looks lousy on a CV. Why should employers not have to go through due process to actually show that someone was āa disasterā.
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Itās very costly in time and money Billy. I agree with protection, but not from day one.
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Yes, it is. And potentially reputation. On both sides of the equation.
Maybe the result would have been that employers took a bit more care to ensure a good match.
Though in practice people would probably get around it somehow.
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And, as Billy said very costly to the now ex-employee if the new employer takes a dislike to them. Seems to me that it would be a good motivator for the employer to take more care in the recruitment process.
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Thereās a lot to be said for a probationary period for new employees during which they have less protection than subsequently. However the length of probation is a difficult one.
An extreme example is how in the late Seventies, my second p/t lectureship ended after two years and two terms because if Iād continued for another term, I would have had tenure.
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Iām a great believer in only hiring the best talent and in having a rigorous hiring process. I also believe in line management doing the interviewing and hiring, not HR, they just facilitate it. But some roles in some industries do not warrant the significant time and effort involved, For them a āsuck it and seeā approach would make more sense and a trial period of three months would seem fair to me. Full rights on day one isnāt practical, and would just inhibit hiring IMO.
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My first āproperā job had a two year probationary period before I was confirmed in my appointment. One managed the situation by not taking on any long term commitments.
Would not wish to use the following example as a general argument, as itās so open to being misused, but nevertheless itās a good example of how the system can be exploited.
I remember a young p/t lecturer in Fine Art being appointed to a f/t post and shortly afterwards applying for maternity leave (on full pay). Not long after she returned, she became pregnant again and then, when she returned again happily applied for the universityās current voluntary redundancy scheme.
In S Africa, despite being a full professor and an HoD, my first three years prior to getting tenure were probationary.
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And then there are the jobs you would want to leave on Day 1
Lured by Jobs, They Ended Up āGoing to Warā for Russia
The South African government is investigating how more than a dozen men unwittingly ended up on the front line in Russiaās war on Ukraine.
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This is simply exploitative, especially if the candidate has left a job to take up the role. If an employer canāt be arsed to do a good recruitment job then they deserve to be hammered.
Surely there should be two sides to this, the employer cannot be held solely responsible for getting the recruitment right 100% of the time with the employee free to make a claim to an Employment Tribunal if things donāt work out.
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I didnāt say they were, but it is on the employer to at least make an effort to get the right person rather than treat recruitment like buying a sweater in Primark, that you can just throw away if you donāt like it when you get it home.
If someone is genuinely not performing then sure, there is a case to move them out and that should be easily demonstrable.
Iām perhaps a bit jaded as I saw this happen just before I retired, when someone was hired against my advice, because it was the path of least resistance. My former employer is now trying to off load that person and thereās pain all around. To me it simply makes good sense to at least try to get it right first time.
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Not always premeditated of course, but itās very annoying for the employer when that happens, especially in a small business.
When my youngest brother got married he hired a UK-based South African photographer that I had recommended.
At the wedding she got chatting to my middle brother Andy (the one who I worked with in his photo business in Turks & Caicos) and wangled jobs for herself and her husband with him. Without my knowledge - I would have told him not to hire her!
By the time my brother had paid several thousand bucks for a T&C work permit for her she had fallen pregnant so very soon after her arrival took maternity leave.
Not planned of course, but it was awkward for my brother.