Yes, exploitation can be a two street Mark. There are rogue employees and rogue employees. I guess itās a case of trying to keep who has the āpowerā in balance.
Goodness 
I never took you for a Citizen Smith (of the Tooting Popular Front) type John. 
Thatās the sort of comment Red Robbo might have made, āI don"t care if BL is going down the toilet, we need a pay riseā, and down the toilet it went.
Managers are people too, dumping shit on them is no less unfair that dumping it on an employee. Itās exploitation that needs to be prevented, not introducing unnecessary and wasteful overhead into the hiring process. 
Edit: I should add that I believe that the management of BL were rubbish too, and then Government policy on the car industry a shambles. Being a car fan I did watch what was going on, whereas Iād no interest in, nor understanding of the mining industryās travails.
I think part of the problem is that very few labour policy makers have ever been employers or worked in the private sector
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Good point.
Is your brother Kevin McCloud, by any chance?
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Obvious - itās the nesting instinct.
Yes, but itās always six weeks after Kevinās first visit 
Not really, you effectively just said that, for some roles, itās too much trouble to recruit properly so weāll take them on a trial and ditch them if it doesnāt work. I consider that lazy and exploitative.
Anyway, youāve always known that Iām a wet liberal 
Nope! 
But John as just one example, some roles have fast staff turnover rates, eg lion tamers, high wire walkers, food delivery, hit men, etc., others people stay (and hopefully progress) with the company for decades. The former rolls do not warrant the recruitment effort that the latter do.
Iām on the side of the employee too, but things do need to be practical.
Practical for whom though? Only the employer? Iād just like to see a bit of a balance in the relationship so that people canāt be sacked on a whim. In your scenario, the employee is carrying all of the risk and I donāt feel thatās reasonable.
Itās unlikely that a good employee would be sacked like that, I think, and a sensible employer will give the new employee time to settle in (because otherwise, he has to start the recruitment process again). How long before the employee gets rights? 3 months? 6?
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Thereās quite a lot of qualification there and we need to bear in mind that most employment legislation was brought in due to the poor behaviour of employers so I donāt really share your confidence. At the end of the day there are good employers and not so good employers, like any part of life.
I donāt have a problem with day 1 because, otherwise, the employer has complete power. Bear in mind that itās only the right against unfair dismissal, not carte blanche, and shouldnāt present a problem since, after all, an employer will have evidence that theyāre not a good employee. Right?
As I implied above, a probationary period is probably the way to go, but outside the public sector its duration would probably need to be down to individual companiesā contracts of employment simply because there are so many variables, particularly with regard to in-service training.
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What about the potential employee that has mastered the art of being interviewed. Gives all the right answers and gets the job. Within a week his fellow workers can see that he is useless but too late.
So pleased I ran a building company, hired um, fired um as required.
Often used agencies so had no responsibility to the worker and if they were good they got hired directly. The agencies didnāt like it but tough.
An often used phrase in my line of work was 'better get your toolbox tidy - youāll be down the road on Friday.
As for my female office staff, always hired those who already had children.
Great times and work got done, no HR and every department in between.
So pleased my working life happened when it did.
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And this is why we have sex discrimination laws.
That was kind of my point, if thereās truly poor performance then you can demonstrate that. No oneās saying that an employee should be unsackable.
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Granted, Iāve gotten into this thread 3 days late, but the Labour Party has nothing over our Republicans on Lunacy and outright anti-democratic crap. In fact, both parties are fairly whacked. Itās just that Republicans are so far out from, the Dems are a speck the the rearview mirror. 
I really do not see how any employer can make a balanced decision to fire an employee after one day or how an employee know how theyare going to fit into their position in a company.
Surely a trial period is common sense, but, as we all know, that is in very short supply in politics.
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Probationary periods are already a thing and no one is saying they shouldnāt be and neither is anyone saying that someone canāt be fired for poor performance. I sometimes suspect that people are putting common sense to one side to accommodate their knee-jerk reaction.
My gripe further up was on the suggestion that people be hired without applying any great effort on checking their suitability because they can be sacked on a whim. That doesnāt sound sensible or fair to me.
If someone is to be fired then there should at least be a sound, demonstrable basis for that.
Unless, of course, one is content that dinosaurs can sack someone for daring to have the wrong colour of hair or, heaven forbid, thinking of starting a family.
This isnāt really about ātrial periodsā though, the current law on being able to make unfair dismissal claims does need changing to reduce the eligibility period which is some cases can be 2 years, a year or even six months would be fairer.
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