So if in some parallel universe you had somehow acquired the ability to strike red lines through EU-derived employment legislation, where would you put them? That is a question I put well before the Brexit Referendum to countless HR audiences, the very people one might think would be straining at the leash to make changes where possible, but in every case, it was substantially without response. Why?
IMHO, because HR audiences have two things which most of the “red-tape bonfire” politicians concerned do not – an understanding of the industrial chaos which would greet any material undermining of employee rights and protections on the one hand, and on the other, the awareness that there are many worse balances to be struck between employer and employee rights than the UK has at present. It may well be that when it comes to what actually feeds that bonfire, all that political rhetoric around “taking back control”, etc., will founder on the very limited feasibility and still smaller necessity of making any actual change. It would be political suicide, for example, to push for reforms which weakened health and safety protections, made discrimination easier or cheaper, or constituted any material assault upon the voice of the unions.
Therefore what the politicians really need is some bits of EU-sourced employment law which no one would miss, which won’t actually affect any of the big picture stuff and whose scrubbing from the statute books they can paint as a...
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