Agenda item

            The Committee was reminded that the Council, at its meeting on 1st June, had passed the following motion, which had been proposed by Councillor Lyons and seconded by Councillor Heading:

"This Council notes with alarm the growing number of employers, especially in the retail, hospitality and aviation sectors, who are making employees redundant before reemploying them on less-favourable terms and conditions; believes that these employers should instead be focused on supporting their employees through this pandemic; agrees with Unite the union and others that this fire-and-rehire practice makes a mockery of workers' rights.

The Council, therefore, calls on the Department for Economy to close this legal loophole as a matter of urgency, for example by amending The Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order1996 to specify that such redundancies should automatically be regarded as unfair dismissals."

            The City Solicitor drew the Committee’s attention to a response which had been received from Mr. G. Lyons, Minister for the Economy.

            The Minister had begun by stating that he would continue the work of his predecessors in protecting those immediately affected by the pandemic and had outlined the extent of that work. He pointed out that they had taken a number of steps to protect workers' rights in terms of ensuring that statutory family-related payments and various statutory entitlements connected with redundancy or the termination of employment had been based on normal pay rather than furlough pay.

            The Department had also introduced legislation to allow workers who were unable to take holiday leave as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak to carry over their annual leave into the next two leave years. Legislation had also been introduced which had extended vital Health and Safety protections to all workers, something which had previously applied only to employees.

Significant progress had also been made towards the introduction of Parental Bereavement Leave and Pay in Northern Ireland, which would be an important new employment right for those parents in work who had suffered the loss of a child.

The Minister had gone to state that, as the focus moved to recovering from the damage inflicted on the economy by the pandemic, his priority would be to ensure that workers had jobs to which they can return. His Department’s economic recovery action plan would help protect jobs, which, in his opinion, was the most fundamental of all employment rights. 

He had then stressed that, in his view, the practice of giving notice and offering a new contract known as ‘fire and rehire’ should not be used as a negotiation tactic.  Using fire and rehire as a tactic to put undue pressure on workers to accept new and often worse terms and conditions or face losing their jobs was unacceptable.

The Minister warned employers that dismissal and rehire should only be used where there was an existential risk to the business and added that, even in those circumstances, they must follow a statutory minimum dismissal procedure, and may have to follow a collective redundancy consultation process if a group of employees was involved.

He had pointed out that he was conscious that any potential measures to address the worst excesses of fire and rehire, including legislation, must be carefully considered to ensure there were no unintended consequences, particularly where those measures could lead to more redundancies. His officials would continue to liaise with their counterparts in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy on this matter.

The Minister had then highlighted the need to remember that any employees who believed that they had been unfairly dismissed from the original contract may be able to complain to an Industrial Tribunal, providing that they had at least one year's continuous service with their employer. Employees may also be able to claim redundancy if they had at least two years’ service.

He had concluded by making reference to the Labour Relations Agency’s Workplace Information Service and the Law Centre as being valuable sources of assistance/support.

The Committee noted the response.