This on its own makes it an unfair dismissal. For a case turning on how a civil servant followed a process, it is quite something that the PM felt able to make a decision without even nodding in the direction of following a fair process himself.
The sacking of Olly Robbins has been badly handled by Keir Starmer.
No.10's bullish response is further damaging the already fraught relationship between civil servants and ministers www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/mand...
Watching it he doesn’t seem to be whinging. He describes the pressure as a fact of life and says that his department was not influenced by it.
Clearly an unfair dismissal - so I’d expect a six figure settlement. If he had been sacked from January 2027 however there would be no cap on compensation at all and it would be much harder to negotiate his payout.
Written English has barely changed in 300 years. If you can read Harry Potter, you can read Robinson Crusoe (1719).
Depends on your definition of modern of course.
There is no way that a payment would have been made without a settlement agreement. The dismissal would clearly be unfair but he has accepted the payment in compensation.
It’s often described as mutual when the conversation is ‘how much do I need to pay you to sign a settlement agreement’.
I think the pay is about 200k a year. He might be on 12 months notice. Or perhaps more likely six months notice and 100k unfair dismissal compensation
Of course the PM had to sack him this year. Had he waited until 2027 there would have been no cap on the unfair dismissal compensation her could have claimed.
If he had genuinely left by mutual consent there would be no need for a payment at all? Since he’s being replaced there is no redundancy payment due. Presumably £200k is a payment in lieu of notice?
Exactly. That’s why it was so misleading for the Economist to frame the Act as a return to the 70s.
Doesn’t that make it a good example? My point was that in the 70s it would be pretty inconceivable that a nationwide logistics business would not recognise a union - and the union wouldn’t need a statutory procedure to get it.
I had to take out a subscription to find all that by the way - so well done! I keep meaning to read more widely so will give it a go.
It does indeed. But the piece is headed 'Britain's Trade Union Laws are returning to the 1970s' And your nuanced second para was not picked up in the Blighty Newsletter which said: "By some measures, the new rules will take Britain back to the 1970s, before Margaret Thatcher’s anti-union reforms"
Sorry - I think I was distracted by the sentence "By some measures, the new rules will take Britain back to the 1970s, before Margaret Thatcher's anti-trade union laws' and the heading saying 'Back to the 1970s'. Should investors sit up and take notice of a nudge?
Full report here: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/695e23...
So the graph showing us reaching the oecd average is based on a small selection of collective rights. When viewed as whole we remain well below the oecd average - as figure 7 in the report shows:
It also strikes me as premature to increase our score for the right of access when we don't yet have regulations describing what that right of access is.
I see that we also increase our score for protection against dismissal and detriment relating to lawful industrial action - but that doesn't seem to account for the very restrictive rules on what counts as lawful industrial and who is therefore protected.
For instance one of the indicators is notice of industrial action - for which our score goes from 0 to 0.5 as we go from 14 days notice to 10 days notice. But there is no measure of the other procedural requirements that must be met before notice can be given.
Oh I see. The claim is not that that actual laws are similar to those of the 1970s but that the overall level of protection is closer to the oecd average - and the UK was close to that average in the 1970s too. I'm not sure that's a very useful way of describing our trade union law.
The Act takes nowhere near the 70s. We will still have a system that in the 70s would have been met with a full blown uprising
Access is new, but it’s really a reflection of the weakness of modern trade unions. Back in the 70s unions would not have needed a right of access - they were there already. Amazon would have been picketed to oblivion if they refused to recognise a union.
Electronic balloting is obviously significant - but inevitable given modern technology. The recognition reforms are pretty technical amendments to the scheme introduced in 1999 - and that did not see the surge in recognition the unions were hoping for.
It’s the 1970s reference I don’t get. Really the act takes us back to 2015 rather than any earlier.
I agree it’s a big change but in the 1970s many employers had closed shops, we had secondary industrial action and no requirement for union ballots of any sort. Nothing in the new Act takes us anywhere near that.
I’d be interested to know what particular measure in the Act you think is comparable with the position in the 1970s? I can’t think of any but perhaps I’ve missed something?
The reference to anyone 50 or over is pretty bleak. Hate to think I’ve entered their target demographic