Last Sunday the Daily Telegraph’s front page enthused with this heading:-
‘David Cameron pushes for workplace shake-up’
(the full article is below)
When dispassionately considered the Conservatives are the Party of the City and of Big Business. Anything else that they say during elections is mere window dressing and should be treated with extreme scepticism by any sensible person.
I think when considering the headlined proposals we should reflect on the fact that it was the Conservative Party, which back in the 1950’s started the whole push towards mass immigration and have consistently done so in office.
Their reasoning is and was very different from Labour’s reasoning. Labour was initially opposed to mass immigration because the purpose of it, so far as the Tories both were and are concerned, is to force down wages in the interests of Big Businesses’ profits.
Labour’s interest in rubbing the “Right’s nose in diversity”, as one of Labour’s inner circle once put it, by supporting mass immigration, only arose when they saw that immigrants have been disproportionately likely to vote Labour. The change also reflects Labour’s move away from its traditional roots in the English, Scottish and Welsh working classes, towards being a Party that only represents the interests of State employees, ‘minorities’ and State welfare recipients.
So, without taking the above into consideration it might be easy to imagine that David Cameron had committed a blunder in proposing an arrangement which will add to the workplace problems of all employed people permanently resident in England.
We are already at a point where it is very hard for young or unemployed English people to get a job, given the competition from EU immigrant job applicants, both in terms of skills and attitude and in willingness to work for less money. The “reform” now proposed by the Conservatives will lead to the increasing likelihood of employees losing their jobs to EU and other immigrant job applicants who are willing to work for less. Such reform does therefore represent a serious threat to the interests of all people permanently resident in England generally whatever their ethnic origins.
It is of course however not aimed at being a policy that the English electorate will like or support, but is instead aimed at shoring up that all important financial support from Big Business and the City, which enabled the Tories to fight the last General Election with a war chest of £48 million. Without that financial support the Tory Party, which is no longer in any meaningful sense a mass party (having declined from more than 2.5 million members in 1960, to arguably no more than 50,000 paid up members today), would quickly cease to be a Party of Government.
Here is the article – read it and see what you think:-
“In a major report to be published as early as this week, the Coalition will reveal the findings of the Beecroft Report which was commissioned by David Cameron to look at workplace deregulation.
Although the Government has yet to agree to the proposals, Whitehall sources have made it clear that both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor want to see changes to the present employment environment which it is believed ties business leaders up in too much red tape.
Proposals in the report include reducing the length of consultations businesses have to enter into before making “collective redundancies” from 90 days to 30 days, a relaxation of the transfer of undertaking (TUPE) rules which are enforced during a take-over and a change to the work permit regime to make it the responsibility of the Home Office and the Border Agency to warn businesses if permits for foreign workers are invalid or about to expire.
The report will be published by the Department for Business, Industry and Skills and is set to reveal tensions with the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, a Liberal Democrat member of the Cabinet.
When parts of the Beecroft Report were leaked to The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph last autumn, there was a backlash from some sections of the Liberal Democrat Party, as well as the Labour opposition and the trade unions.
The report said that employment tribunal rules should be relaxed to make it easier to dismiss under-performing staff.
The Beecroft Report is named after Adrian Beecroft, the venture capitalist and Conservative Party donor, who was brought in by Number 10 after the Prime Minister expressed frustration at the lack of progress on deregulation.
Mr Cameron asked Mr Beecroft to look at how employment regulations could be relaxed without falling foul of European Union legislation. His report was completed only after Whitehall lawyers had agreed that the EU would not be able to block the changes.
The Beecroft Report was presented to ministers last autumn but was never fully published and Conservative members of the Coalition have become increasingly frustrated at the delay in any reforms suggested.
It contains 20 recommendations and although they would mean major changes to some elements of employment law, Whitehall sources said that there would still be plenty of protection for employees.
The five major recommendations beyond the changes to rules governing employment tribunals include changing the Equality Act to block third party harassment claims – where employees can take action against an employer who is deemed not to have done enough to protect its workers from outside abuse – and putting a cap on loss of earnings payments following successful employment tribunal cases.
The report also recommends overhauling the TUPE regulations by allowing firms to harmonise workers’ employment rights one year after a takeover and also allowing firms in economic difficulties to agree redundancies in five days.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9277441/David-Cameron-pushes-for-workplace-shake-up.html
