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Redundancy rights change gives an amnesty to bad employers Redundancy rights change gives an amnesty to bad employers
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As a trade unionist and socialist for some 40 years I understand why managements wish to cut the redundancy consultation time to 45 days (Cut in redundancy rights an attack on jobs, says TUC, 19 December). Many years ago, managements could discuss, negotiate, examine arguments, find compromises, and seek alternatives. Of course, aided greatly by the loss of the ready power to strike and by the steady erosion of workers' rights by Labour and Conservative governments, these skills have become rarer as they have become less necessary. "If you don't like it here, there is the door," is all most managements are able to say now and they don't want or need 90 days to say it, or, more importantly, to display the sheer embarrassing inadequacy of their abilities. Sadly, managements and their skills must, in common with the rest of us, count themselves among Thatcher's and Blair's victims.
David Beake
Wymondham, Norfolk		As a trade unionist and socialist for some 40 years I understand why managements wish to cut the redundancy consultation time to 45 days (Cut in redundancy rights an attack on jobs, says TUC, 19 December). Many years ago, managements could discuss, negotiate, examine arguments, find compromises, and seek alternatives. Of course, aided greatly by the loss of the ready power to strike and by the steady erosion of workers' rights by Labour and Conservative governments, these skills have become rarer as they have become less necessary. "If you don't like it here, there is the door," is all most managements are able to say now and they don't want or need 90 days to say it, or, more importantly, to display the sheer embarrassing inadequacy of their abilities. Sadly, managements and their skills must, in common with the rest of us, count themselves among Thatcher's and Blair's victims.
David Beake
Wymondham, Norfolk
• Further to your report on the latest attacks on the rights of working people by the Tory-led coalition, Jo Swinson, Lib Dem employment relations minister, said the cut in redundancy notice from 90 to 45 days will help employees to get new employment quicker. This is a sleight of hand. As an ex-union official I know that employees involved in a 90-day consultation who gained new employment could ask for early release and in most cases this was granted, thus saving the employer money. Reducing the maximum consultation period to 45 days will lead to dismissed staff signing on earlier and thus putting increased pressure on the national coffers.
Cllr Bill Shelton
Leicester		• Further to your report on the latest attacks on the rights of working people by the Tory-led coalition, Jo Swinson, Lib Dem employment relations minister, said the cut in redundancy notice from 90 to 45 days will help employees to get new employment quicker. This is a sleight of hand. As an ex-union official I know that employees involved in a 90-day consultation who gained new employment could ask for early release and in most cases this was granted, thus saving the employer money. Reducing the maximum consultation period to 45 days will lead to dismissed staff signing on earlier and thus putting increased pressure on the national coffers.
Cllr Bill Shelton
Leicester
• What upsets me most about this government's rhetoric is that unemployment is a recognised tool in its economic strategy designed to keep wages down. Most individual ministers and coalition members must be aware of this, meaning they are knowingly castigating and attacking the unemployed while simultaneously deliberately maintaining a level of unemployment and low pay that suits their neoliberal policies. It is hypocrisy and cruelty of the worst kind. Even worse, it need not be happening. It is a result of ideology and callousness in the face of the real human suffering being caused. Government by the rich, for the rich, and vicious with it. What have we come to?
Dhevdhas Nair
Chagford, Devon		• What upsets me most about this government's rhetoric is that unemployment is a recognised tool in its economic strategy designed to keep wages down. Most individual ministers and coalition members must be aware of this, meaning they are knowingly castigating and attacking the unemployed while simultaneously deliberately maintaining a level of unemployment and low pay that suits their neoliberal policies. It is hypocrisy and cruelty of the worst kind. Even worse, it need not be happening. It is a result of ideology and callousness in the face of the real human suffering being caused. Government by the rich, for the rich, and vicious with it. What have we come to?
Dhevdhas Nair
Chagford, Devon
• Staff at Amnesty International have been staging one-day strikes over threatened redundancies for some weeks (Report, 3 December). These have now been implemented – and clearly not on a "voluntary" basis. This staff cull is an extraordinary action for a body whose whole rationale is standing up for human rights. Despite constant representations to management from the staff's unions, top management has not entered into any negotiation or consultation process. I urge readers, many of whom will support Amnesty and admire its work, to lobby AI with demands for its management to at least enter into negotiations with their recognised union representatives over this extraordinary – and, according to union sources, unnecessary – cull. Without this preparedness, AI must stand accused of breaching the human rights it exists to defend.
/>Dr Sheila Cohen
/>Senior research fellow, Work and Employment Research Unit, University of Hertfordshire 		• This article was amended on 21 December 2012 to remove a letter about strikes at Amnesty International that was published in error. Its author, Sheila Cohen, had originally sent the letter to us by email on 25 October, but withdrew it the same day after realising it contained errors. She intended to submit a different letter on another subject this week, but accidentally attached the withdrawn letter to her email instead.