Employers: Fire and Rehire

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am sure my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has heard what the noble Lord said. I am not going to give any commitments on her behalf. It is important to point out that only a very tiny minority of employers resort to these practices. The vast majority of employers look after their employees well and responsibly. As I said, we do not encourage these practices.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his answers so far, but can I probe him just a little further on his suggestion that there are certain circumstances in which fire and rehire would be appropriate or necessary? It is well-established in employment law that a company facing challenges can make lawful redundancies, so why on earth should they be able to get into practices of firing and rehiring? Is he really seeking to establish high levels of insecure and zero-hours employment?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

No, of course I am not. That is why we have one of the best employment law frameworks in the world. We have one of the lowest levels of unemployment. We have one of the highest minimum wages in the developed world and an excellent record on employment law. The point I am making is that in some very limited circumstances—which is not to be encouraged—if the alternative is the company closing and everybody losing their jobs, then it might be appropriate for a company to engage in this kind of restructuring because 90% of a wage is better than no wage.