An Open Letter to Angela Rayner

10 January 2025,

 

Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP,

Deputy Prime Minister,

MHCLG

2 Marsham Street

London

SW1P 4DF

 

 

Dear Ms Rayner,

You and your colleague, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, are bringing forward Bills defining in law what you believe are greater rights for employees. You seem to be under the impression that employees are at a disadvantage in the work environment.

You clearly have never had the experience of firstly recruiting and then employing people, because if you had I suspect you would not be going down this path. Employing people is a nightmare already and your plans look set to make it even worse. Is it surprising that many business owners consider it easier to simply import their product or service, rather than go through the hassle of employing UK workers?

Most employees just want to get on with their job and co-operate to make a success of things.  However, there are a minority who are never happy and use the law in order to apply pressure on their employer; soaking up time and effort which could otherwise be utilised more profitably.

An employee is selling their time for money, and if they are not happy in any way an employer can’t stop them from looking for and taking another job – that is the best employment right. This also encourages employers to make the jobs in their business as attractive as possible, as one of the biggest costs of employing people is the time and effort put into recruitment. Instead of tying us up in knots with rules about how employers treat employees, you should concentrate on making the economy so dynamic that employers have to work to retain the staff they have.

The vast majority of businesses employ fewer than fifty people and are reliant on outside advisers when it comes to employment law. Even with this help, there is no way that small business owners can keep on top of every wrinkle of the law. As such, it is all too easy to make an innocent mistake that will mean that you ultimately lose the case at an employment tribunal.

Two instances come to mind that illustrate how the boot is very much on the employee’s foot. We once had an employee who (when sober) was very good, and we helped him in a number of ways to come off alcohol altogether, after he was banned from driving. In a factory / warehouse environment you can’t have people working under the influence of alcohol, and when after a few years he reverted to his old ways we gave various warnings, verbal, recorded and finally a written one. When he came back after lunch one day drunk, cursing and swearing at everyone he was dismissed for gross misconduct. This he appealed with the assistance of the GMB Union of which he was not a member. Because our insurance company wanted to pay him something to go away, we ended up having to fight the ensuing case out of our own pocket. I issued the final written warning with a validity of one year, however during that year the law changed to say that the first written warning could only be valid for six months which I was totally unaware of. We therefore lost the case on a procedural technicality. This taught me that the system is skewed against the employer. Even with everything recorded in writing, and whilst the employee can have blatantly behaved badly – this counts for naught if the correct procedure has not been followed. The idea of equity before the law is long forgotten, and instead it is ‘how can we find a way of getting money out of the employer to help the employee?’ How can one have respect for such a corrupt system?

Even assuming the employer follows the letter of the law in disciplining and dismissing an employee, if they object the employer’s insurer will normally offer to settle, seeing it as cheaper than fighting a tribunal case. It is therefore the difficult employees who profit from the law, whilst those who work well at their jobs who have to deal with the disruption. As an employer you can’t treat employees as fellow human beings without laying yourself open to problems later. The only way is by having everything written down and everything being defined in writing; the law creates a straightjacket, micro-managing employer-employee relations. No two workplaces are the same, no two people are the same, and by making it ever more complicated and expensive to employ people it makes it ever riskier to take on young workers, or those who have been unemployed for long periods.

In another case, we took someone on who had been unemployed for 3 or 4 years. He was quite well-qualified and seemed keen, but after a while he started going through phases of just not caring. We tried all sorts of things with him, but could not go on having to continually double check his work and waste time dealing with customer complaints about bad workmanship. After trying for nearly eighteen months, we reached the end of the road and had to ask him to leave. With your proposals we are not going to be able to give someone like that as many chances in future.

The world of work is complex enough already and it is made ever worse by politicians seeking to second guess all eventualities, rather than leave it to the two parties to the employment contract. As it is, the employment contract is increasingly worthless as much of what is in it is a restatement of legislation. I just don’t see any logic in your proposals that will bring long term improvement to the lot of those employees who just want to get on with their job and earn an honest wage. It will however, give those who want to cause trouble even more strings to their bow as they exercise their “rights”. Regrettably it adds more woe to the lives of employers, who will have to find ways of accommodating those who want to take advantage of these new ‘rights’. You propose that we have to advise employees of their right to join a union. Why? We as employers can’t, at the moment, stop anyone from joining a union if they want. You are then saying that unions will be able to negotiate on behalf of our employees if they represent 20% of our workforce. What are you trying to achieve here other than force union recruitment? We are a family founded and run business, and we have a good working relationship with our employees – the last thing we need is someone coming in with an agenda from the outside. It comes back ultimately to who is running the business. It is the employer who has to be responsible for every aspect of the business, the employees are only committed to provide the employer with a proportion of his or her time in exchange for an agreed amount of money.

There are no ‘rights’ for employers, because in the eyes of many politicians we are considered next to the devil incarnate; exploiters of poor, innocent, downtrodden defenceless workers. We get no thanks for providing employment, giving people purpose in life, collecting taxes, pensions etc. No, we have to be made to give more and do that whilst trying to run a sustainable business. I don’t get the impression you believe in making a success of this country by working to reduce the cost of doing business in the UK, or by making certain that our public services actually provide a reliable service at a reasonable cost.

No one anywhere owes any of us a living, we have to earn our way both as a country and as individuals. However, this obvious fact appears no longer to be understood, and many seem to think that that the magic money tree will keep them in the life to which they are accustomed without any effort on their part. If our turnover does not cover our costs we go out of business, and quite rightly too – our customers pay our wages, and they will only pay what they deem a fair price. If we are driven out of business, another 25 people lose their main income.

The idea of “giving employees more rights” is a false promise, as by adding more complexity and cost to the workplace you diminish the opportunity for people to find work. One only has to look at our continental neighbours with their high levels of youth unemployment to see the repercussions of inflexible labour markets. The changes first in the budget and now with your proposals are counterproductive as, like plants leaning towards the light, employers and entrepreneurs will have to take evasive action. This will leave Britain poorer, doing away with the little flexibility there is in our employment practices, and condemn greater numbers to unemployment. This will not be tomorrow or next month, but in 5 or 10 years. Why do you do this? Surely you have learnt the lessons of the 1980s, how through reducing the burden of employment law we went from having high unemployment to almost full employment which many said would be impossible in the age of the microchip?

Instead of looking to give workers more ‘rights’, why not look to simplify the law around employment; give employees full power over their own contracts. Remember that if an employee decides to walk out on his or her employer there is really absolutely nothing the employer can do. Concentrate on making the UK an attractive and low cost place to do business, and you will get the growth that you crave alongside an economy that is dynamic with plenty of job opportunities.

History tells us growth is maximised in countries that allows entrepreneurs freedom to innovate and develop. Over the last twenty years these freedoms have been under almost constant attack, and in the last six months those attacks have become a full frontal assault. You seem intent on killing the lifeblood of this once great country.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

Alastair MacMillan

Cc: Rt. Hon Jonathan Reynolds, Rt. Hon Sir Kier Starmer

 

(Photograph: David Woolfall, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Alastair MacMillan runs White House Products Ltd, a manufacturer, distributor and exporter of hydraulic components to over 100 countries. He is a supporter of the Jobs Foundation.

 

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