Bullying employees to accept worse terms and conditions has become commonplace during the pandemic. The government must intervene
Earlier this year, it was reported that government discussions had taken place over the possible removal of employment protections enshrined in EU law. Kwasi Kwarteng, the secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, responded with righteous indignation. Now that Brexit had taken place, he tweeted: “We want to protect and enhance workers’ rights going forward, not row back on them.”
Given the Conservative party’s decades-long commitment to deregulating the labour market and freeing employers from “red tape”, this was a bold claim to make. Coming from Mr Kwarteng, it was doubly counterintuitive. As an up-and-coming member of the party’s laissez-faire wing, he coauthored with like-minded MPs the 2012 book Britannia Unchained, which described British workers as “among the worst idlers in the world”. But as luck would have it, circumstances have presented Mr Kwarteng with a golden opportunity to demonstrate the sincerity of his new convictions. In February, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy received a report from the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service on the iniquitous practice of “fire and rehire”, an unscrupulous tactic used by employers to unilaterally impose inferior terms and conditions on employees. MPs from all sides of the House of Commons have condemned this abuse of power in the workplace. But Mr Kwarteng has so far resisted pressure to publish the Acas report and done nothing.