Employment Rights Bill: 'It’s now time to restore the balance and ensure that businesses here get a fair deal'

Their proposals will apply in England, Scotland and Wales, however the Bill has many parallels to what is being proposed in NI, where responsibility for employment law is devolved.

Stormont’s Department for the Economy has proposed its own Employment Rights Bill - a massive 160 page set of proposals to reform workplaces in NI which was released as the ‘Good Jobs - Employment Rights Bill Consultation’ over last summer’s holidays.

Most business owners seem unaware of the existence of this Bill and its potential impacts, so we would advise all NI employers, no matter what size your business, that if you aren’t already aware of the proposals, then it’s time to sit up and take notice.

FSB NI submitted our response to the Employment Rights Consultation last September and we are now approaching the ‘business end’ of the legislative process. The Assembly’s Committee for the Economy begins its scrutiny work on the Bill on Wednesday when it takes feedback from Department for the Economy officials on last summer’s consultation and begins taking evidence from other witnesses. We will be listening attentively to hear what officials say about the responses they received.

My FSB colleague, Tina McKenzie, who is FSB’s UK Policy and Advocacy Chair, has already warned the UK Government that its own Bill will fail to motivate small businesses to hire more workers and, with growth flatlining, that the economy is in no fit state for a ‘war on work’.

Similarly, whilst we commend the Department’s ambition to foster good jobs and welcome a number of the proposed changes, particularly those that are a sensible updating of NI’s employment laws, the objective of seeing good terms and conditions for employees must not come at the price of making NI overly bureaucratic and uncompetitive for investment and growth. If unbalanced legislation were to be forced through, it risks working against the intended objective of good jobs.

Within those businesses that are aware of the proposals there is great concern at some, especially those that seek to extend trade union activity into some of our smallest firms, such as reducing the ‘threshold number’ of employees required for a trade union to seek formal recognition, which the Department wants to slash from the current 21 employees down to just 10, along with the introduction of sectoral collective bargaining.

At FSB, we have been engaging with our members and listening attentively to understand their views of the proposals and also to consider what further measures could be included to alleviate other potentials costs to business. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that businesses in NI lag far behind their counterparts in other regions and nations in terms of direct financial support from government, with a stand-out example being the 75% rates discount that has been made available for the past three years for businesses in the retail, hospitality, tourism and leisure sectors in England but for which there has been no equivalent for businesses here.

It’s now time to restore the balance and ensure that businesses here get a fair deal which avoids a dogmatic approach to employment legislation that stymies growth, risks jobs and hinders entrepreneurship.

To that end, FSB recommended that the Department apply SAMBITs – ‘Small and Micro Business Impact Tests’ to really understand the potential impact on small firms of any legislative proposals. The Department made efforts to scope and publish a series of impact assessments along with the draft Employment Rights Bill, which recognised that “small and micro businesses may potentially find it more difficult to adapt to and comply with any new employment rights legislation”, however, these assessments were quite limited in their detail and many of the possible impact scenarios – in particular, the potential cumulative burden of multiple new regulations – remain unexamined and/or unseen.

The Department and the NI Executive need to ensure that they get the balance right to help create more good jobs across NI, otherwise the proposals in the Employment Rights Bill could have a massively negative impact on businesses, slowing growth and hindering the economy at precisely the time we need business to be unleashed so it can deliver the growth and jobs that will be needed to help pay to rebuild our crumbling public services and infrastructure. The Executive needs to get this right or we will be paying the price for years to come.