Fire and Rehire Tactics

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey, not least as a fellow north-west MP, and alongside so many north-west MPs here today—as a region we certainly punch above our weight, and I am glad that we are leading the call on fairness, dignity and decency at work.

How many more debates must we have before the Government finally ban fire and rehire. Labour colleagues have tried every possible avenue to get protections for workers whose bosses threaten worse conditions or the sack. We have had countless urgent questions, Opposition day debates, private Members’ Bills and early-day motions —all of those have been scorned by the Government. I nearly said “rogue bosses” earlier, but the point is that, on a technical level, such employers are not rogue; they are complying with the law, which does not prevent this Dickensian practice. That is despite the public being overwhelmingly against it, and despite the misery it has caused to our constituents who work for British Gas, British Airways, the University of Liverpool, Go North West and Tesco. Despite the Prime Minister himself stating that it is unacceptable, still the Government refuse to act.

Voluntarism does not work as an approach—we cannot just hope that employers do the right thing; we need legislation. As with so many issues, the Prime Minister speaks out of both sides of his mouth here. While calling it unacceptable, he and his Ministers also state that fire and rehire is a necessary tool for employers. Unfortunately, that is revealing of their entire mindset towards employment rights and industrial relations. Everything must be based on the stick—on threats—rather than trusting workers and trade unions to be mature negotiators. As a former officer for the trade union GMB, and in my early career at the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, I successfully fought against such practices for almost a decade before becoming an MP. Seeing how widespread they now are, and how employers treat the Government’s inaction as a tacit endorsement of those kinds of practices, is utterly appalling to me.

With examples of fire and rehire spiralling during and since the pandemic, British workers deserve better. As the cost of living crisis turns the screw on household incomes month by month, Ministers must be aware that even those in work are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Incomes are already way behind prices. Maintaining the ability of employers to fire and rehire gives them the wink from Government that it is an acceptable tool, and one that will continue to grow unless stopped.

Fire and rehire makes employment rights and contractual terms and conditions basically worthless. Long service usually entails some sort of reward and recognition for that service. However, I remember being on the picket line at British Gas during the most recent dispute over the practices, and hearing from someone who had spent 30 years working for the company only for it to seek to tear up everything that he had earned in that three decades of loyalty and put him on worse terms and conditions. That is a slap in the face for the loyalty he had shown that company.

The skills, experience, insight and knowledge of the people who have worked for companies for years risk being lost in order to save a few quid for the employers. That is totally inhumane and does not make any business sense. It raises an important question about the productivity gap in the UK if we are willing to let experienced, capable and skilled workers be fired by their employers for not taking either a pay cut or a cut to the terms and conditions that they have built up over time. Ultimately, if those sorts of practices become even more widespread, what is next? Where does the race to the bottom in our labour market end?

Fire and rehire flies in the face of the Government’s stated aspiration of levelling up. It is yet another opportunity for the Government to change course and offer some security to workers buffeted by soaring costs. It is about the kind of country and society that we want to live in. Ministers boast about employment levels, but this is an opportunity to ensure that work is worth it, that employees have rights at work, and that it pays to be in work. Let us have a commitment today to ban fire and rehire, and let us also have a date for the employment Bill—before we do not have any employment rights in this country that are worth the paper they are written on.