SMEs claim coalition bad for business
Just under half of small-to-medium employers believe that the coalition government’s policies to date have had a negative impact on their business, while just less than a third feel that today’s Budget will make things worse. A survey undertaken by pollster YouGov among 523 senior SME decision-makers revealed that 48% were unhappy with the impact […]
Health and safety cuts will put employees at risk
Cuts of a third to the number of automatic health and safety inspections from April will put employees at risk and inevitably lead to more workplace injuries and deaths, lawyers have warned. The Work and Pensions Minister Chris Grayling announced yesterday that automatic inspections would now take place only at high risk installations such as […]
Crowdsourcing will decide which regulations go
The coalition government is introducing a crowdsourcing initiative to enable employers to pick which of the current 21,000 business regulations should stay or go, starting with the retail sector. The initiative will be announced by Business Secretary Vince Cable later today in a speech at the Federation of Small Business conference in Liverpool along with […]
Budget ‘must tackle unemployment’
Employer bodies have called on the coalition government to focus on delivering a “meaningful Budget for jobs” next week in order to tackle steadily rising unemployment, which is now at a 17 year high. UK unemployment increased by 27,000 in the three months to the end of January, hitting 2.53 million or 8%, the highest […]
Businesses relying on temps
The nature of the UK labour market is changing as a result of the ongoing difficult economic circumstances, with the use of temps and those working in “unsustainable, unconventional” ways on the increase. According to research from temp recruitment agency de Poel, the number of temporary staff hired by employers increased by 65% last month […]
Budget blag: Pubs want beer duty frozen to ‘protect jobs’
A pub association has called on the coalition government to protect nearly a million jobs in an industry worth more than £21 billion by freezing beer duty in next week’s Budget. A study by economic forecasting consultancy Oxford Economics, commissioned by the British Beer & Pub Association, pointed to the “vital role” the sector played, […]
Government plans to drop maternity for SMEs and weaken bribery act revealed
Controversial proposals by the coalition government to exempt some foreign companies from prosecution under the Bribery Act and drop maternity and paternity regulations for small businesses could bring it into conflict with other administrations. Draft guidance being drawn up by the Minister of Justice and seen by the Guardian appears to indicate that foreign companies […]
The return of the thank you event
During the depths of the recession many companies either cancelled all staff events, rewards and incentives or conducted them in secret. Those which ran incentive travel programmes were forced, by those who deemed such spending was “inappropriate” during a recession, to deliver vouchers or tickets, unbranded, to their staff’s home addresses. End of year thank […]
Health and safety spot checks could be reduced: good or bad for business?
The British Safety Council has called for public debate on the implications of proposals by the Health and Safety Executive to reduce unannounced workplace inspections by a third following deep budget cuts. The move follows the leaking of a letter signed by HSE’s chief executive Geoffrey Podger to the BBC’s File on 4 programme on […]
28,000 Police jobs to go
Police forces across England and Wales will lose a total of 28,000 jobs, including 12,000 officers, over the next four years due to budget cuts, a confidential memo to the coalition government has revealed. The Association of Chief Police Officers predicts that the number of officers will drop by 8%, while one in six civilian […]
Unemployment: ‘poor job matching’ is the problem
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has claimed that unemployment is less of a problem that some are suggesting and would be significantly lower if jobless workers were better matched to vacancies. He told the Conservative spring conference in Cardiff yesterday that the Labour Party was wrong to say that the coalition government’s welfare […]
Public sector recruitment freeze extended while police face cuts
The coalition government has extended its temporary civil service recruitment freeze at the same time as Home Secretary risked confrontation with police by warning that cuts to their pay and conditions would be necessary to avoid thousands more job losses. Home Secretary Theresa May told the 140,000-strong police service in England and Wales yesterday that […]
MoD: 17, 000 forces jobs are to go
The Ministry of Defence has come under fire after announcing plans to axe 17,000 posts across the armed forces over the next four years, some 11,000 of which will take the form of redundancies. The first tranche of the three or four waves of redundancies will come in September. The RAF was the first to […]
‘Enterprise zones’ could make unwelcome return
The coalition government’s widely anticipated plans to revive enterprise zones in a bid to regenerate local economies and boost employment will prove costly and “ineffective”, two leading think-tanks have warned. The return of the zones, which were widely used by the last Conservative administration between 1981 and 1996, is expected to be announced in the […]
50 thousand NHS staff to go by 2015
More than 50,000 doctors, nurses and other NHS staff are set to lose their jobs over the next four years, according to the largest survey undertaken since the coalition government came to power. The study is based on a series of Freedom of Information requests asking for “confirmed, proposed or potential” job losses over the […]
Conservatives under fire for internship auction
The Conservative Party has come under fire after auctioning off internship places at leading City and PR firms for the children of wealthy backers during a fundraising event last week. The move comes at a time when youth unemployment is hitting 20% and work experience is deemed crucial to future job prospects in a highly […]
Redundancies ahead as cuts bite
The first three months of 2011 will be “a quarter of reckoning” for the jobs market, with the number of redundancies across the economy set to rise “sharply” as coalition government cuts start to bite. According to this quarter’s Labour Market Outlook from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and management consultancy KPMG, the […]
Chris Last appointed head of Government HR Operations
The implementation of a single civil service HR policy across all Whitehall agencies has moved a step closer following the appointment of the first head of Government HR Operations. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s in-house publication People Management, Chris Last, HR director general of the Department for Work and Pensions, has […]
Oakeshott resigns over coalition bonus cave-in
The Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman in the House of Lords resigned last night in protest at what he saw as a cave-in by the coalition government on a deal over bankers’ salaries and bonuses. Lord Oakeshott, who was a City fund manager for 35 years and advised Business Secretary Vince Cable when the Lib Dems […]
January figures good but unemployment to remain high
The CBI has warned that unemployment will remain “stubbornly high” over the next two years, as new figures revealed that hiring in January grew at the fastest rate for six months. The employers’ lobby group predicted that the number of people out of work would jump from 7.9% last year to peak at 8.4% or […]
