When Prime Minister Keir Starmer met British business leaders and trade unions earlier in the summer, the parties agreed to “wipe the slate clean and begin a new relationship of respect and collaboration”. This was underpinned by a commitment to full and comprehensive consultation which will necessitate constructive dialogue.
This process is happening already in this jurisdiction, with the Labour Relations Agency facilitating the “Engagement Forum” (local business leaders and trade union officials) which is currently at the heart of discussions with the Department for the Economy regarding the “Good Jobs Bill” (the consultation closes on September 30).
The language of a partnership approach has made a welcome return in both these forums, but there is a fine balancing act at play here. The trade unions are hungry for regulatory reform, while businesses are wary of growth being stifled or the unintended consequences of reform negatively impacting on business – small or large alike.
Change, especially regulatory reform of employment law, always involves a little pain, be it re-learning or un-learning, new policies, changes to systems, avoiding litigation and so on. No one particularly likes change, but it is coming and there is a direction of travel along this bumpy road.
To this extent the signposts of the change range from minor adjustment right through to significant reform and so it is important to know how the sequencing and choreography of reform will take shape.
There may well be an initial “big bang” followed by a “drip, drip” and so all parties need to wrap their heads around the pace of reform and be ready to absorb the impact, be that economic or otherwise.
Impact assessments are a useful tool when gauging reform implications and invariably they will be boiled down to things such as – people, costs, bureaucracy, systems and so on.
With so little substantive reform in this area for some time it can seem that the extent of the proposed changes is a little overwhelming, but the reality is that when broken down and assessed in terms of magnitude the reforms are eminently manageable.
In the days before satellite navigation, we all had to endure what unfamiliar roads had in store for us, bumps and bends included.
Creating the conditions for growth and productivity, whilst establishing baselines and criteria for good jobs is certainly a road less travelled and perhaps, just like the impending October budget, there will need to be some pain.
Who will bear the brunt of the pain remains to be seen but you know the old saying . . . no pain etc.
- Mark McAllister is chief executive of the Labour Relations Agency (LRA)
