Unions Together

Last month, we hand-delivered our 6,000-strong letter to Vince Cable at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The timing couldn’t have been more crucial. Last year, David Cameron asked a venture capitalist called Adrian Beecroft, who has donated more than £500,000 to the Conservative Party, to write a report outlining his suggested changes to our rights at work. After months of delay, Labour MPs have finally forced the Government to finally publish his report. That report fulfilled all our worst fears – if Beecroft gets his way, nobody will be safe in their job, as employers will be able to fire at will. Mr Beecroft made his intentions crystal clear in the draft of the report that was leaked. He wrote: “the downside of the proposal is that some people would be dismissed simply because their employer doesn’t like them. While that is sad I believe it is a price worth paying…..” Unsurprisingly, these words didn’t make it into the published version of the report! But the proposal to take away job security from every single working person in Britain by introducing “no fault dismissal” is only the beginning. Without offering a shred of evidence, the Beecroft Report claims that ripping up rights at work across the board will create jobs and help end the recession. In fact, removing job security from the entire population by allowing employers to “fire at will” will make the economic situation worse. If people are worried about their jobs, they will be more likely to save and not spend, reducing demand in the economy. There is a real risk that the Government will action Beecroft’s plans to scrap our rights. Their austerity programme is making the economy worse, not better, and has pushed us into a double dip recession. Up until now, Vince Cable’s Business Department has led the way on watering down rights at work – his department is still consulting on whether or not to implement no fault dismissal. There is a real risk that substantial parts of the Beecroft report could become law. We need to make sure that every single one of our Members of Parliament know how damaging these proposals are – and we need to ask them to put pressure on Vince Cable to oppose Beecroft’s unfair and unevidenced proposals in their entirety. That's why we're asking MPs to sign an Early Day Motion (a petition in Parliament) to oppose the plans. You can read it here, and check to see if your MP has signed yet. Will you email your MP now? Just scroll back to the top of this page, enter your postcode and press 'participate', and our campaign tool will have an email ready to send!