Editorial: ​Stormont should heed business warning over Sinn Fein employment plan which needs time to be scrutinised

​Business has fired a warning shot to Stormont over the implications of a radical new employment bill.

As we report today, over twenty business groups have written a joint letter to Northern Ireland's economy minister warning her not to rush through major changes to labour laws.

Sinn Fein’s Caoimhe Archibald is pushing ahead with her Good Jobs bill, which would include measures such as day one employment rights. Anyone who thinks about this provision in even a cursory way will see the huge dangers in it.

Imagine a small employer already struggling with immense energy costs, a high minimum wage and increased taxes, takes on an urgently needed new member of staff. Then, to their horror, they find that this new staff member has presented well in interview but is lazy in reality, or incompetent, or sour, or all three.

To protect employers in these situations, they have always been allowed to impose probation periods, as well as being allowed to get rid of them easily in the opening years of their time. It would be unfair, and in some cases ruinous, for a business under pressure to be unable to retreat from an appointment that not working out.

Such a provision would also be demoralising for hard working employees across NI, who have shown their loyalty and earned their enhanced employment rights, yet would see new staff who lack that commitment getting immediate protection from dismissal.

It is crystal clear that any such radical new right will make employers terrified of taking on new staff. How can that be sensible?

And this is only one of 50 changes in this bill. The business groups have told Ms Archibald that it is not possible to give her legislation proper scrutiny before the end of the assembly term this time next year. At the very least, this extreme employment plan needs that scrutiny.