Big Graeme wrote:
I'm sorry that is the employers own damn fault.
Both parties know the end date, both parties would have agreed (or should have) to any contingency for project over runs or early completions, both parties would in my experience be discussing how the contract would end and any handover required. If that slips then the project manager's backside wants kicking.
You can not amend legislation because management are numpties.
I understand that but not all managers are numpties and not all managers are bad people. All managers though do make mistakes and in the modern working environment, with its pressures/stresses the employment relationship has to have equilibrium, which is why I was talking about it needing to be managed well with good intentions on both sides.
All I was offering was that with the current employment conditions as they are some organisations may feel this gives them flexibility around their resourcing and explained how that relates to the change in law. You may think that is unethical but I'm not arguing that it is just suggesting that for some organisations it might actually give them freedom to explore different resourcing situations which may benefit them and the local talent pool by providing a solution to short-term resourcing issues. In that situation you might even be able to argue it is more ethical because of the potential problems it could solve.
I have experienced the issue in organisations where FTCs have been given out and not extended formally but have continued because an organisation hasn't addressed the administration. Of course the organisation is responsible for that, however sometimes the local management may be restricted because of decisions out of their hands. It can be the case that all this uncertainty is bad/horrible for all involved but I think you have to see both sides of the picture even more when in situations like this. Big corporations have less to argue with the point but small businesses do especially those where that kind of flexibility can mean sink or swim.
I think the point is that really this is political ideology masquerading as helping out new businesses and that's the discussion point. However it doesn't mean there isn't an argument there for a change in the law because I've just suggested a situation where that could benefit both parties.
At the moment the one year qualifying rule doesn't really make that much difference in terms of protection for the individual unless they are unfairly/wrongfully dismissed (see later on evidence). Even with a one year qualifying rule a company can still remove a person from the organisation via redundancy and the employee gets nothing from that (redundancy having a 2 year qualifying rule for those that might be reading and not now). It doesn't require that an employee receives a payment if they were made to leave the business after, say, 14 months as long as the company follows its policies. How much extra work that creates must be impossible to predict with any accuracy and the same with how that impacts upon those organisations needing flexibility. Discrimination claims do not require a qualifying period so really we are only talking about unfair/wrongful dismissal and we don't really have a figure on which we can base our evidence i.e. how many are there for people who have between 1 year and 2 years service? There could be thousands, there could be a couple of hundred. If it was the former then very hard to argue against. If it was the latter you could argue that the flexibility within the economy is the bigger picture. Same with the other point of view i.e. how many companies really require this sort of flexibility? It might be easier to predict this because getting the information is not tied to data protection issues (compromise agreements etc). However gathering that information could take a while and be useless as soon as we've got it.
Unfortunately we'll (the UK) probably never be able to resolve the situation with the sort of progressive adult debate needed in this country because the two main political parties employment rights/laws are tied to ideological missions (for whatever reasons) rather than a true desire to sort the problem out.
