Back in June Acas produced a report on the “fire and re-hire” practices used by some employers to make detrimental changes to employees’ terms and conditions of employment. In essence, the employee is given notice of dismissal from his old contract but offered immediate reinstatement on a new one that incorporates the changes the employer wanted to make. The practice has been thrown into particular relief by the Covid pandemic and the consequent adverse impact on some employers’ ability to maintain previous contract terms.
A political hot potato at the best of times, opinion on the practice is starkly polarised – for employers, it grants necessary flexibility and helps avoid or reduce compulsory redundancies, while for those on the other end, it is a means of worsening contractually-negotiated terms, the pandemic is being exploited as a smokescreen for reducing benefits without the financial imperative to do so, the tactic is used or threatened to undermine or bypass genuine workplace dialogue on change, and so on. Sensing an opportunity to make some electoral capital out of the practice, MPs and ministers across the political spectrum have all leapt into the fray brandishing their own strong opinions and only somewhat belatedly commissioning Acas to find the facts which may justify them. In the end, however, the resulting report did not add a great deal to those respective perceptions other than confirming that a lot of people feel terribly strongly about fire and re-hire...
A Wixom, Michigan, business accused of making false statements to obtain a loan has agreed to pay a settlement of just over $1.5 million after it was sued by the federal government, according to th...